


Augmented Rascals

by fresne



Series: Voyages of the Bakerstreet [24]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Actually John is 29, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, Hand Jobs, Implied non-con occurred three hundred years before the story, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, John is a horny teen, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mutual Masturbation, Other, Phone Sex, SCIENCE!, Sex Toys, Transporters have so many accidents why do people use them, Vaginal Sex, ipreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-07-28 03:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 42
Words: 38,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16233317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: After a transporter accident turns John, Lucy, and Martha Hudson into teenagers, they all must struggle to adapt to their new situation.Lucy's daughter doesn't believe that Lucy is her mother. Martha finds it hard to get the crew to follow her orders now that she appears so young, and she doesn't have her telepathy to help her. John's practically thirty – dammit – and just wants a little affection (okay more than that) from his husband.An attack by Ferengi intent on using the crew as indentured labor will push them in unexpected ways.





	1. Other POV

**Author's Note:**

> John is practically thirty as it says on the tin. Which is to say he's 29. He's know Sherlock 9 years. They've been married for 4 years.  
> We are now entering season 6. There are 7 "seasons".  
> Episodes that may have occurred that I haven't written because I realized at 250K in that I needed to cut some stuff out of my overly ambitious project plan if I was ever going to finish. Which given average story length is 9-10K, would have meant another 3-4 months writing. So for now, that's what you get in those bits.  
> They include:  
> -What are Little Omegas Made of? John's first love/shag, Tadpole, is found on a remote planet. Robots ensue and has exact same scene as the Two Johns scene in Harry's very redemption story, but with different people. Also, robots.  
> -Irene's Drones – Irene shows up with some individuals of various species that are objectively attractive and that has something do with her getting her magic tears back.  
> -An Augmented Blink of the Eye – Where the heck did Sherlock disappear to? Again? What's that buzzing noise? Horny alien wackiness ensues. John probably gets knocked up by Sherlock. Something in the water.  
> -I Irene – Irene shows up. This time stuck on a planet with robots that is in no way like the Tadpole episode. Because Irene.  
> -Not a Merry Man (Augmented or Otherwise) – Squire of Gothos. Sally Donovan. A broken lute. Oh, and John dressed as Maid Marion, Sherlock as Robin Hood, and there's dueling. John in a dress duels with Sir Guy. Aka, reminder the squire exists and does pop in an out of their lives.  
> -Alternative History Mashup – John learns to play fizbin on planet Gangster. Sherlock is disturbed by the gleeful murder, but no mystery.  
> Not to mention all the off hand references I've worked in. Somewhere, there is a parallel Rome story.  
> Mind you, the main reason I'm saying this is to let you know that Sherlock has met Tadpole, if not under the best circumstances.
> 
> If you're wondering when Sherlock will be turned into a teenage. Because inappropriate sex between an adult John and teen Sherlock is more your thing. That's comes later. 
> 
> Also, warning, this story features an adult and someone with the body (and therefore hormones, but not mind/experience) of a teen having sex. It's the resolution of something John has brought up in at least a dozen of these stories.

Lurin had worked hard to get where he was, which was to say he'd done his best to ensure that others worked hard on his behalf. As the 211 Rule of Acquisition in the 93rd commentary said, "Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them."

Lurin had the lobes for success.

His source in Starfleet Records thought that he'd gotten the better of Lurin when he sold him the location of a source of vendarite.

After all, no Ferengi with any sort of lobes would set foot on a world where there were unprocessed vendarite deposits.

As if Lurin intended to do the digging himself.

Not when his source clearly indicated that there were Federation scientists studying plate tectonics on the same world. As if there was a profit to be had in the movement of rocks. Rule 23. "Nothing is more important than your health… except profits."

All Lurin had to do was to hire some Klingons to provide the muscle, while Lurin provided the brains and the funds to buy second hand Klingon birds of prey.

He informed his cousins of the results, "Well before we had to make our first payment to the Ferengi Commerce Authority, we have had a hundred percent return on our investment."

"Don't forget the bribes we'll have to pay when it comes time to sell the vendarite," said Nom, because Nom could find a reason why inheriting a latinum mine was dangerous to his health.

Tevek looked dubiously at the floor. "I do not think the Klingons clean the air filters." He rubbed his lobes. "Doctor Govin says that my hearing is fine, but I know I can hear ringing."

Nom said dourly, "We shouldn't even be on a ship that's ever carried unprocessed vendarite."

"What we need," said Lurin, "is more indentured servants." Slavery was for other races. Indentured servitude, now that was the Ferengi way. Obtain debt and leverage it. If the scientists on the planet hadn't precisely signed their own contracts, what of it. The bargain of not killing them was an implicit contract. "That is why I have already sent a distress signal to summon more. More servants in the mines. More profits."

"And what if a vessel answers the signal that these birds of garbage cannot deal with?" asked Nom. "These ships are held together by rust and Klingon vomit."

"That is why I am the Daimon with a Daimon's share of the profits, and you only have one share of the profits." Lurin felt smug. "You questioned the expense for the probes we deployed in the nearby systems, but they've let me know that the only ship near enough to hear the signal is a Pegasus Chimera class Federation ship. Easy pickings."

He chuckled, already imagining the profits that would soon be his.


	2. John POV

The Maralonian's understanding of medicine was completely outside of anything that John had learned through Starfleet. Full of new methods for treatment. Still, as mind expanding as that had been, he told Hudson, "It'll be good to get back to the Bakerstreet."

"I do hope the captain hasn't blown it up in your absence," said Hudson, who had been visiting her niece, who'd immigrated to Maralonian. John mock glared at her, but she laughed. "You know how he gets."

"I hope Eva didn't miss me too much," said Lucy, who was cradling a tray of plants. She'd told John what they were, but for the life of him he couldn't remember. Other than it was very similar to some other plant, which had some sort of significance, according to Lucy. "She was looking forward to staying with Freddy, but she's still her Mama's girl."

"It's only been a few weeks," said Hudson. "I know you're concerned about her, but this will be good for her."

Lucy sighed, "I know. I worry sometimes that I'm somehow making her clingy by always going to her when she gets upset."

They'd had variations of this conversation a few times, which was fine. But still, John was glad that the Bakerstreet was nearby.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the shuttlepod rattled.

"Should it doing that?" asked John.

"No," Hudson turned away from Lucy and tapped several controls. The shuttle continued to rattle. "We've encountered an energy anomaly. We're losing hull integrity on the starboard side." She tapped another control. "Bakerstreet. Emergency transport."

The transporter beam enveloped them, but as they reformed in Transporter Room Forest, something was different.

For one, John was shorter. The parrot that normally stared at him from chest height was now eye height.

Owen yelped and tapped his com. "Captain, you need to get down here immediately."

Hudson, and Lucy looked like they were in their early teens. He looked down at his own hands, smaller, more slender. He didn't know if he was the same age, but he was certainly younger.

John groaned. "I hated being a teenager." He'd gone from being a happy outgoing kid to a teen dragging his family down a rabbit hole of family drama, screaming matches, and eventually landing him at a parochial school to give him some stability.

"Oh, I don't know," said Hudson. "It's been a long time since I was young." She laughed. "I can't hear any of your thoughts." She wrinkled her nose. "So, l must be younger than fifteen. After that I was reading minds and passing thoughts with my friends." She fluffed her breasts. "Older than thirteen. I didn't grow my girls until then." She giggled. "They haven't been this perky in years."

Speaking of mammary tissue, John's was tender. His nipples felt painfully sensitive against the fabric of shirt. Actually, all his skin itched and tingled. As if an electrical current sparked over his skin. His bones ached. He felt restless, needing something. Wanting to pace. Rub his back against the wall to ease the ache in his back. His labial tissue felt full, engorged with blood. His cock was semi hard. He had a low grade fever.

Exactly as he'd remembered.

John exchanged a glance with Lucy. She nodded wearily at him. He could just make out the shift in her scent through his own. They were both in pseudoheat. The years long process where the Rybo-Viroxic-Nucleic acid in their DNA did the work of telling their systems to mature into adulthood, and which mimicked many of the physical symptoms of heat.

He took a step forward and bit his lower lip at the sensation of his labia rubbing against each other.

Sherlock ran into the room and there was who John needed. Who had exactly what John needed. "What is it, John" He stopped and stared. His eyes growing dark green, almost black, as he breathed in John's scent. "John, I…" Even across the room, Sherlock's scent was gorgeous. He was gorgeous. John's eyes fluttered as he inhaled Sherlock's musky pheromones.  Rich with the promise of a good hard fuck. Somehow even more potent after his time away.

"Captain, there was a fluctuation in their mass during transportation, as if the transporter was trying to compensate for something," said McCarthy.

"Sherlock, any idea what could cause this?" John struggled to stay focused through all the sensations he'd been happy to leave behind with his teen years. At the cracking pitch of his higher voice.

"I have many theories, which as yet are without basis in analysis," said Sherlock, who gave John one more sweeping look and practically ran out of the room.

John sighed.

Sherlock had better figure out how to reverse this.

John did not want to go through this again. As it was, it was all he could do not to palm himself in front of the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RVN is not a real thing (RNA and DNA are real things), but according to Trek it is. Keeping in mind, we hadn't mapped the genome in the 1990s, but less the 60s when the idea of Augments was created.  
> http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rybo-viroxic-nucleic  
> http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Betazoid_phase
> 
> http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rascals_(episode)  
> And just to be clear, unlike in Rascals, they're not 12. Feel free to imagine each one of them as slightly different ages within their teens that makes you the most comfortable.


	3. Sherlock POV

Sherlock leaned against the wall outside of Transporter Room Forest trying to control his breathing. His eyes and mind told him that John's body was that of a child.

_He repeated this to himself many times. He ran up and down the staircases of his Memory Palace trying to think how such a thing had happened._

_John hadn't smelled like a child._

_Teen. He'd smelled utterly ripe and ready for Sherlock to mount on the floor of the transporter room. His normally enticing scent had become impossibly rich. Fecund. Fertile. Wanton. Luxurious._

_The window curtains and hearths had no answers._

_Sherlock would not go back into the transporter room. He would not. Sherlock knew John's scent was a sign of adolescence. Pseudoheat. He was theoretically familiar with the concept, but Mummy had kept him separated from omegas at that same phase of his development. Segregated. "You would not have been able to handle it," said Mummy from their portrait in the Portrait Gallery._

_Sherlock was well aware of Mummy's thoughts on the process and the scientists who had engineered it._

_A normal adult would instinctually control themselves. Would not be aroused by the scent. Would be able to identify at a sub-conscious level that John was not an adult._

_"Not that it would have saved their failure with my crèche," said Mummy dryly from a wall. Then the inevitable squabble between Mummy and First Father and Second Father, whose nation states had not opted to take a brief turn into early over production._

_Sherlock focused on the chemicals at work in John's body. His body. His very young body. His small slender body. The years smoothed away._

_"Not that much younger than when I first met you," said a small miniature of John as his T.A. in the antechamber to the Portrait Gallery. The entryway to the John wing._

_"You were capable of going into heat," hissed Sherlock. "And were in your early twenties."_

_"I was twenty." That John moved into the miniature of the occasion of their first coupling, enshrined with a gold frame set with amber, "I don't know. It's been years since we've done Naughty Student Gets Knotted. You know I'll want to. Is ripe," the plosives of miniature John's p set off explosions in several fireplaces throughout the palace, "for it. You want to give him just what he needs."_

Sherlock did want to, which he should not. If John had had the genetic marker for juvenile heat, then Sherlock's reaction would make sense. It wouldn't be still be problematic, but it would make sense. But John hadn't reported that he had it before and given his teens his parents would have given him specific suppressors for it if he had. Sherlock had not made a wider study of the variant among the Augment population, but statistically a low portion of the population would have – John's scent had been intoxicating. Lush. Verdant. There was a predisposition to think of floral scents as sweet, but this was nothing sweet. Heavy and inviting.

Statistics. Think about statistics. Given only one crèche, Mummy's creche, among Augments created by the British Nation state had been designed with that gene variant, two omegas and one alpha, Augments originating on Earth would have a low statistical probability of presenting the gene. There was of course the issue of the Breen, but they were irrelevant to John, John, John. Even several steps away, the alluring scent lingered. Ravishing the senses.

_"Focus," said Mycroft. "And not with the head associated sexual intercourse." Mycroft repeated the word intercourse several times, which did help. The thought of Mycroft and sex belonged in separate quadrants._

John had not gone through pseudo heat. He was going through pseudo heat. Thinking about his alluringly sultry scent would not solve the essential problem that John had regressed in age.

He needed to focus on that. He tapped his com. "Bridge. Have the wreckage of 221C tractor beamed into the shuttle bay. Transfer the full set of all sensor readings from the energy anomaly to the shuttle bay's stations.

"Yes, sir," said Hunter.

Sherlock was going to figure this out.

He had to. 


	4. Lucy Hebron's POV

Lucy insisted on being examined first. Awkward, because her only option was Julian.

After what had happened after she'd given birth to Eva, she'd always taken care to have John be her doctor. Not easy on a ship this size, but she'd managed. She'd managed to avoid him at social functions with Hunter. She'd managed.

She wasn't managing very well right now.

Better than John, who groaned where he was lying on another biobed, pushing his rear into the cushions beneath him. It looked like his pseudoheat was hitting him a lot worse than Lucy's. She had no idea what she smelled like, but his scent reminded Lucy of standing under the pergola at Grammy's in March. Rioting with purple wisteria and star jasmine, vines dripping flowers on all sides. An overwhelming scent of sultry fragrance with just a touch of aromatic compost over the wisteria roots, and wood rot from that one stump grammy liked to use as a bench.

She was doing better than John. She just felt horrible. Achy like she'd remembered feeling at this age. Hot flashes coming and going. Cramps occasionally stabbing through her abdominal region.

Lucy lay on the biobed and willed it to return her to adulthood. The monitors unhelpfully chirped and beeped.

Julian said, "I'll want to examine each of you, but based on your relative maturation, I'd place your current age at fourteen to fifteen."

"Not fifteen," said Hudson swinging her legs over the side of another biobed as if this were fun. An adventure. Her legs were long enough to reach the floor. "Definitely not fifteen." She cupped her own breasts. Again and gave them a little fluff. "They were just so pert at this age. And I can do this again." She lifted a leg up next to her head. Again.

It was annoying. Generally Hudson wasn't so self focused. Not when people around her were this close to giving into panic. "Do you have any idea what could have caused this?" Lucy felt desperate. Even the plants that she'd been holding had regressed to seedlings.

"I'm sorry," said Julian, who at least was standing stay away from her.

Lucy wanted to cry, but she was a mother and she couldn't afford to focus on herself. She needed to see Eva. She needed to be able to take care of her child.

She waited to see if Julian learned anything from the others. Hudson's psionic nodes were just beginning their pituitary development. John's hormones were off the charts. Julian said, "That's very high, but within the spectrum at this age."

"I know," shouted John. He jumped off the bed. "Julian, I'm practically thirty years old. I'm a Doctor. I'm married. I'm an adult. I know all this." He tapped the side of his head. "I'm still in here."

Julian laughed. "Your temper certainly is still in there." He put his hand on John's shoulder. "Unfortunately, there's very little I can give you to ease your symptoms."

"You mean the symptoms of adolescence," said Lucy wiping sweat from her forehead at a sudden flash of heat. "I didn't miss the hot flashes."

Hudson stopped examining her breasts in the mirror. "Hot flashes?"

"Yeah," said John, who kicked the wall. Yelled inarticulately and threw a metal tray across the room.

"John, calm down," said Julian.

"I am calm!" shouted John, with his hands in fists, glaring at the floor.

"I did not enjoy hot flashes either," said Hudson, "I was very happy to finish perimenopause. Oh, and, of course the phase. Throwing myself at every male in the vicinity was somewhat humiliating."

John flushed bright red. "I did not!"

"No one is saying you did dear. I said me. That's when I took a leave of absence from my um… previous career in Starfleet and came back to be a teacher. Oh, the phase is pretty brutal on Betazed women. Our sex drive quadruples and our telepathy gets very unreliable." Hudson frowned. "Will I begin having a period again? I haven't had to worry about that in a decade. Ugh cramps."

Julian answered her by replicating a small brown paper bag and handing it to Hudson.  Hudson rummaged around inside. "Oh, good muscle relaxants. I used to have the most terrible cramps every twenty-four days like clockwork." Lucy she'd been so lucky as to only have them every twenty-four days, but for omegas it was pretty constant during pseudoheat as their bodies grew. From what she understood, any alpha transitioning to omega went through the same thing.

Hudson smoothed her hands along her hips and did a little spin. As if this were fun. "Julian, are we free to go?"

"Yes, but I want you to come back tomorrow. We should carefully monitor your vitals in case anything changes."

"Sherlock will fix this," said John, lifting his chin. Cheeks flushed with either embarrassment at his earlier outbursts or a hot flash. He wasn't looking at Hudson.

"Ummm… about that," said Lucy. "John, do you want to stay with me and Eva while we're," she waved at them, "like this."

He looked at her blankly. "Why?"

"Sherlock's an adult Alpha." Lucy lowered her voice, embarrassed to have to say this despite being a grown woman with a child. "His pheromones could trigger you to go into heat."

"That's not a thing!" said John. "I'm still a Doctor. I still know that's not a thing."

"While it is a widely held belief, but there's no medical evidence that an adult alpha can trigger a true heat in an adolescent omega," said Julian, as if she would ever believe his confirmation of anything.

Lucy felt her own spike in anger that wasn't entirely teenage hormones. Words that she'd suppressed for years tumbled out. "You mean like putting an alpha in a privacy shield with an omega just after she's just given birth. You mean like an adult alpha can't trigger a heat in an omega who has just given birth! You mean like micro-heats aren't a thing! You mean like that!"

Julian sighed, even though he didn't need to breathe and just how fake he was made her so angry. "I have been, if you'll excuse the phrase, augmented since then. I am now able to research outside of Starfleet medical files and add to information based on our own research. But I again apologize, particularly since my appearance is based on an Augment doctor."

"He's not a real Augment," muttered Lucy, even though this was the exact opposite of the position she'd taken in college. Her entire life. Was the opposite of everything she believed. She just wanted to disagree with him.

"You should listen to Julian," said Hudson. "There were extensive studies done by Colonel Green's scientists during WWIII on the effects of pheromones and hormones on Augment adolescents, as well as other things."

Lucy couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Don't take his side. Especially not using war crimes," said Lucy. "Green wanted to prove we were animals. Even looking at those studies is unethical." When she'd first heard about some of the things Green had done when she'd done her own research into Augment history, not that it had actually been taught in school, it had made her feel sick. Meeting Billy and knowing he and Connor had actually gone through some of that made it personal. Horrible. She couldn't understand why Hudson would even bring them up. "Those studies were destroyed after end of the war as part of the peace accords." She could feel tears welling in her eyes, which was just stupid. That had been centuries ago.

It was yesterday.

When the Bakersteet had gone back in time, she'd spent the entire time just holding Eva. Telling her baby that no one was ever going to hurt her. That they were not going to settle on Earth. If she had to fly to Vulcan in a commandeered shuttlepod, she'd have done it.

"Oh, not entirely deleted. Some data was retained," said Hudson, completely oblivious to how the words would affect Lucy. "There was this was this one mission where I was given… well, let's not tell stories out of school." She smiled. Oblivious to how close Lucy was to screaming.

"The ethics around studying medical studies involving children is always tricky." Julian's expression was calm. "Given Augment history, most Augmented parents won't participate in studies even now."

"When I think of that fucking bastard hurting Sherlock, torturing him, I just," John crossed his arms. Tears welled in his eyes. "If it wouldn't have destroyed the timeline, I would have killed Colonel Green."

Lucy did not want to be part of this conversation. She'd just wanted to warn John to be careful. She swallowed. "John, I still think you should stay away from Sherlock. He's is a mature adult."

"So the fuck am I!" shouted John, who immediately turned bright red. "Sorry. Hormones. Sorry. I'm just going to go." He stomped out of sickbay.

"I need to pick up Eva," Lucy told the floor. She got her seedlings and went.

As she rang the bell on Freddy's quarters, she suddenly realized that she hadn't even called ahead. The door slid open.

"Mommy!" Eva's face fell. "You're not Mommy. Who are you? Where's Mommy. Daddy said she'd be back today." She held up a picture with a giant red heart and two stick figures in it. 'Welcome, HOME!!!!" was scrawled at an angle in crayon. "I made her a sign."

"I…" said Lucy.

Freddy came to the door. He stared at her. "Luce, is that you?"

"There was a bit of a transporter accident," said Lucy. She smiled and waved. "Hi."

"Why do we even use those things?" asked Freddy.

Eva looked between them. "Daddy, you said Mommy was coming back today. Where's Mommy?"

"Sweetie." Lucy wanted to hold Eva. Her heart ached with wanting it. "I am your Mommy. There was an accident, but it's me."

"Liar!" Eva looked at Freddy. "Make her go away. I want Mommy!" She burst into tears and ran into Freddy's room. Presumably into the little fort they kept replicated for her there for when she stayed over.

"Maybe, I should go," said Lucy. "The captain will probably figure it out in a few hours."

They looked back inside his quarters. Lucy could hear her child crying. She ached with wanting to comfort her and couldn't. Her arms were full of seedlings. She was the cause of those tears.

"And if he can't," Freddy said quietly.

"Then we'll figure something out. Sorry, I should have called ahead. Warned you. I just," she clutched the tray in her arms, "I wasn't thinking straight. Go take care of Eva." She blew out a breath. "We can talk tomorrow morning."

"Okay," said Freddy. The door closed, leaving Lucy with an armful of plants.

Plants. That was something she still knew how to do. Could still deal with.

She went to her lab. Was slightly shorter, but she could replicate a stool. She had to assemble it. The replicator in her lab was one of the smaller models, but she could use a screwdriver. She wasn't useless.

She climbed up and examined the seedlings. Like herself, there was nothing wrong with the plants themselves. They were just immature versions of the adult plants that she'd brought back with her.

She tapped her fingers on the table top, thinking. There was nothing anyone could do to force grow herself and the others, but plants weren't like that. She could keep some control plants set aside and expose selected plants to a nutrient bath and a concentrated light regimen that would force their growth. If the plants developed into the adult versions, then at least they'd know that theoretically they would as well. If the controls also experienced development, or worse regressed, at least they'd know. It would be something.

She documented her theory and plan into the Botany logs. She was halfway done setting up the experiment when Sherlock burst into the lab.

She backed away so quickly, she almost fell. "Air filtration on full." She moved as far back as she could. "Captain," she said formally to remind him of the obligations of rank, "you shouldn't be near me or John. Your scent could cause either of us to go into heat."

Only to see him roll his eyes at her. "Lucy, you're an intelligent omega. Don't tell me you subscribe to an old," his eyes moved back and forth, "Beta Human's tale."

"If you mean that my grandmother wouldn't leave me alone with adult alphas all through my adolescence, and I'll do the same for Eva when she gets older, then yes I do."

"Ridiculous. It's all based on Beta preconceived notions of omega sexuality. Either you have the gene variation for juvenile heart or you don't." Whatever he meant by juvenile heat. Lucy had never heard of it. She had heard what she knew to be true. Adult alphas should saty away. But Sherlock kept talking. "My presence or absence will have no effect on your hormone production." He looked at her station. "Ah, you're already force growing the Draebidium Calimus."

"Yeah, I thought I should test if they will grow into adulthood."

"But have you kept controls aside?" asked Sherlock.

"I'm not an idiot," escaped her mouth. She clapped her hand over her lips to hold back the words that had already jumped out.

Sherlock laughed. "Most people are idiots, but you are less than some."

It made her feel like she should try again. "Sherlock, it's not idiotic. The last thing any of us needs,"

Sherlock's com went off. John's voice wailed out of it. "Sh…Sh…Sher…Sherlock! I…" and cut off. Sherlock immediately ran out of the room.

"Is to go into heat." Lucy told the empty lab. She sighed. Logged onto Bakerchat and went to the Augment channel. She let everyone know what had happened and her concerns.

She caused a flame war.

Some of the Augments on the ship were certain that adolescents couldn't go into heat and used exclamation points to prove their point. Others had all sorts of stories of friends of friends. Khatri wanted to know if they'd be having this discussion if the captain had become an adolescent. There was quickly deleted post that the captain was a teenager based on his behavior. Owen made a rambly post about how the worst part of pseudoheat had been the horniness, which was just like Owen and ridiculous. Everyone piled on him for reinforcing negative stereotypes about omegas. Khatri tried to defend Owen, but was crushed by a tide of exclamations and emoji's. 

Sh'Alaack sent her a private message. "Lucy, I just heard. Are you okay? How did Eva take the news?"

She sent back, "Not well." And got an immediate response. "Khel and I are coming over. You select the stupid child inappropriate Human entertainment to expose us to." Lucy smiled at the monitor.

It was good to have friends.


	5. John POV

John was at loose ends for the first time in his adult life. He had nowhere he needed to be. It felt like all the sorrow in the universe pooled in his veins. Almost thirty years old and going through adolescence.

Again.

It had been horrible enough the last time.

Every part of him ached. He rubbed his back against the wall. Against a rubber ball. That didn't ease that ache either. He'd forgotten how he used to soak through his pants with vaginal emissions. Wanking didn't work to relieve him. He came. It just didn't help to relieve the ache. He was too hot. He was alone in his quarters. Their quarters.

They were empty. Sherlock's scent was like a ghost. A sad ghost. A sad lonely ghost.

He was all alone. Sherlock wasn't there. He didn't care. He'd left John to go to sickbay by himself. Suddenly John found himself crying. Not silent tears, but big gulping sobs that wracked his entire body. He tapped his com, desperate to hear Sherlock's voice. "Sh…Sh…Sher…Sherlock! I…" another wave of sobs shook him. He sank to the floor clutching his knees and crying. He was still on the floor when Sherlock ran into the room.

"John! Julian said you were fine! You have to be fine! Lucy is fine. An idiot with preconceived notions, but fine."

"I… I… I… you left me alone! You don't… you don't care!" This last word came out as a wail. John didn't know what had come over him. Despair clung to his blood like a liquid tar. It weighed down his feet and arms. He could hardly move.

Sherlock knelt down and gathered him up. John was incredibly aware of how much smaller he was than Sherlock. While before, Sherlock carrying him had just been a matter of his incredible strength, now something about being carried this way made John feel very vulnerable. Soft. Exposed. He rested his head on Sherlock's shoulder.

Sherlock carried John over to the couch. Sitting with John nestled in his lap. John cried into Sherlock's chest, while Sherlock stroked his hair saying over and over, "Love you."

As suddenly as the storm of weeping had come, it subsided. Leaving John feeling worn out and empty. Light headed, almost as if he was floating. He whispered into Sherlock's chest, too embarrassed to face him. A quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald seemed to work, so he whispered, "Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness."

Sherlock's hand kept stroking his hair. John felt his lips press against the top of John's head. John shifted to cuddle closer, wanting to scent him. Needing him. As he moved, he felt Sherlock's cock, hard and erect under his thigh. He froze. Suddenly aware of the constant slickness between his thighs. His cock gave a little jump. He was very aware of the way his sensitive nipples brushed against the fabric of his shirt. Very aware of the heat emanating from Sherlock's body. Very aware of Sherlock's cock. His big, fat, beautiful cock that would feel so wonderful if he shoved it in John.

He pulled away then to look at Sherlock between eyelashes clumped by tears.

John dimly thought to himself that at the age he current was, no one would ever have left him alone with a mature alpha. Which was ridiculous. John was an adult. Sherlock was his husband. He blurted, "Fuck me."

Sherlock swallowed. "You're too young."

"No! I'm not! I just look like this, but I'm in here," said John feeling suddenly very angry. "Now figure this out while I make dinner." He went to rattle in his kitchenette, but he couldn't reach all of the shelves. He scrambled up onto the counter while Sherlock watched, because his immensely tall husband was too much of a fucking prima donna to fucking come help him pull a fucking jar of fucking real peppers that John picked up on DS9 because he gave a fuck about fucking quality.

John may have slammed the jar down a little too harshly.

It cracked, slicing open his thumb. He hissed. Sherlock was next to him in an instant.

John jerked his hand away. "It's nothing."

"You are bleeding." Sherlock examined the cut for glass with a micrometer. A wave of tenderness washed over John. He reached out to touch Sherlock's curling black hair with his other hand. It was silky as always. Sherlock said, very quietly, "Don't."

John moved his hand away, while his husband cleaned and cared for his wound. His very adult, very mature, very luscious smelling husband.

John ended up replicating Pad Thai for dinner. Sherlock, the berk, picked at it, until John shouted at him to eat it, because he knew that Sherlock hadn't eaten anything while he'd been away. Probably hadn't slept either. Refused to take care of himself.

Humiliatingly, John burst into another round of tears. Clinically, he knew that he was reacting to the sudden influx of teenage hormones that he hadn't had to deal with in over a decade and were currently at peak production. He tried to recite the chain of how the Rybo-viroxic-nucleic structures in his genetics were telling his pituitary glands to produce [gonadotropin-releasing hormone - GnRH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonadotropin-releasing_hormone), follicle stimulating hormones, luteinizing hormones, and… he did not give a fuck because he hadn't been able to cook a real dinner and now his husband wouldn't even eat and had refused to fuck him and the universe was going to end.

Sherlock put a forkful of food in his mouth, but what did it matter. Nothing mattered. John flung himself onto the couch. Sherlock came over and cuddled him for the second time in the evening. John sobbed into his chest for a second time. Stopping once again light headed and empty. Full of the awareness that Sherlock's scent had a very sharp and aroused tinge to it. That all John would have to do is shift a little, and he'd feel Sherlock's cock trapped in his uniform, but easy to free.

John climbed off Sherlock and looked at the floor. They finished their meal in silence.

"I should go back to examining the wreckage," said Sherlock after he finished cleaning his plate.

John looked up suddenly. Fucking stupid tears suddenly filling his eyes again. "Can't Sh'Alaack look at it? Please, I don't want to be alone tonight. It's… been weeks since I've seen you." His voice was getting high and whiny, but John could not for the life of him make himself stop. "Please. It'll be better tomorrow." He closed his eyes. "I'm just not used to the hormones."

"You won't have to get used to it," said Sherlock firmly, "I will fix this."

John looked at him tearfully.

"And I will not go back to the wreckage tonight."

John smiled. Suddenly happy. He bounced up and kissed Sherlock's cheek. "Thank you." He and Sherlock sat next to each other on the couch. Sherlock's bare toes under John's bum. John knew he could feel the dampness leaking through his pants. Told himself to focus. Wriggled because he couldn't sit still.

John read from one of the medical journals that had piled up, because he was a fucking doctor! Mind drifting constantly to Sherlock, shifting his toes and grumbling about how none of this made any sense.

When they reached John's regular bed time, they looked at each other awkwardly.

The time of the night when if they weren't solving a mission, reading on the couch would have become Sherlock's feet rubbing against his legs. Which have led to kissing. Which would have left to fucking. Which would have led to them drifting off to sleep, spooned together..

Sherlock went to the replicator and replicated jim jams.

Jim jams!

They'd never slept in anything except skin. Not wanting something in the way, just in case one of them woke up in the middle of the night, which was most nights and they got in a second round of sweet slow love.

John swallowed. He wanted Sherlock. But his sexy, gorgeous husband, instead of getting naked was putting on clothes to sleep in their climate controlled room. They didn't need clothes!

In a fit of perverse annoyance, John replicated flannel jim jams in bright blue with small cartoon ducks on them. He glared at Sherlock with his arms crossed. Sherlock turned bright red. The flush clear on his cheeks.

He wanted John. John knew it with every aching bone in his body. He just needed a push.

John lowered his eyes and tried to look, if possible, even smaller and younger. He'd always loved sugar baby role play. Easy when Sherlock was so much taller. "Daddy, is it time for bed?"

Sherlock groaned. "That is not helping."

"But Daddy, you like what a filthy boy I am." He walked up to Sherlock in his stupid purple silk jim jams. "Because you're my daddy, and I belong to you. Please, Daddy. Baby's been so lonely without his daddy. Won't you tuck me in?"

Sherlock leaned closer. Scented John's neck. He was so much larger than John. Stronger. The vanilla cedar smoke of Sherlock's scent had John's heart racing. "Fine." Sherlock bit out. "But the clothes stay on."

John held up his arms, wanting Sherlock's arms around him. "Yes, Daddy."

Sherlock fake grumbled and picked him up, which was just lovely. He lay John down on the bed and pulled the covers up around John. Actually tucked them in on the side, leaving John feeling tightly held by Sherlock across his entire body.

John wriggled in the bed. "Read me a story. I want to hear the story of the naughty Sugar Baby whose Sugar Daddy neglected him." John had written it a few years ago after Sherlock had forgotten him while researching some sort of vampire bubbles. 

"John, I…" Sherlock looked away. "I realize that you are actually an adult, but I could injure you in your current condition if we were to couple."

"Not if all you do is read me a story," said John feeling stubborn. "Please, Daddy. I love hearing your voice." John reached over to the bedside tablet and called up the story. "Please, Daddy!" The extra whine in his voice wasn't faked. He couldn't help it.

Sherlock sat down on top of the covers next to John. Further pulling the sheets taunt across John's body. "There was a very naughty Sugar Baby with a very absent minded Sugar Daddy, who kept his naughty Sugar Baby in a beautiful flat on Risa, while he worked on his science experiments at a nearby space station. Sometimes he would get so caught up in science he would forget his wickedly wonderful Sugar Baby."

John picked up Sherlock's free hand and held it against his chin. "You would never hurt your Baby's feeling like would you, Daddy."

Sherlock answered by lifting their joined hands and kissing John's knuckles. "So, the naughty Sugar Baby went to his Sugar Daddy's lab, wearing the real silk bespoke clothing that his Sugar Daddy had acquired for him, and flirted with all the other scientists, making his Sugar Daddy very jealous."

John's breathe quickened. "Did the Sugar Daddy throw his Sugar Baby against the side of a biobed and fuck him in front of the other scientists to show them who owned his Sugar Baby?" He didn't. John knew that. He'd written the story after all, but sometimes Sherlock would ad lib if asked questions.

Not this time it would seem. "No, do you want to ask questions or do you want a story?"

"I want a story, Daddy," said John, pulling Sherlock's hand back to his chin. Up to his lips. He stole a little kiss.

"Now the Sugar Daddy got so absent minded with jealousy that he flipped the red switch. The one he wasn't supposed to flip while his Sugar Baby was around. That naughty Sugar Baby got hot."

John didn't ask how hot. The answer was obviously very hot. John was very hot. He rubbed his arse against their bed and arched his back. Pressed another kiss to Sherlock's hand. Then feeling very naughty and hot, slipped Sherlock's index finger between his lips.

Sherlock breathing rate increased. Harshened. He cleared his throat. "So, very hot. The kind of heat with only one cure." The naughty Sugar Baby curled up inside the mass interphasic transomater. He said, 'Daddy, I'm sick. Please, Daddy, I need a little prick of medicine,' and he rubbed his little sugar bum all over the inside of that machine."

John did not fill in the next line. He was too busy sucking on Sherlock's index finger, what John liked to think of as his fuck finger, the one he always used to stretch John with first.

"But his Sugar Daddy did not have a little prick. He had a… ah," John pulled Sherlock's fuck finger out of his mouth with a pop and started in on the web between his fingers. "Very long fat prick." Sherlock shifted where he was sitting. Pulling the sheets even tighter across John.

John did not fill in the next line. Instead, John slid Sherlock's slightly longer middle finger and the fuck finger into his mouth. Swirling his tongue around them.

"It was so long and fat that when he stuck his Sugar Baby with it the naughty Sugar Baby couldn't take it all in at once." Sherlock's ring finger nudged against John's lips. John obligingly opened his mouth and let it in for a suck. "He cried out, 'Daddy, it's too much.' But his Sugar Daddy knew he could take it because he'd taken it many time before and science is all about repeatability and he was a 'very' good scientist."

John ground his hips down again. His pants utterly soaked through his jim jams. His cock was rock hard. He didn't dare reach down to touch it. If he did, he'd go off and Sherlock would stop. Also, John was a pretty decent scientist too. He had successfully predicted that Sherlock would push the tablet against his cock currently tenting his jim jams.

"The Sugar Daddy said, 'You're doing very well Baby, can you take a little more? You can't get your medicine unless Daddy can get it all inside you.' And since the naughty Sugar Baby was very eager to get his medicine, he wriggled around the monstrously big prick to slide more of it into him."

John obligingly wriggled, unmooring the bedclothes on his far side, which was fine, he was burning up. He pushed the covers down, exposing his sweat soaked body to the cooler air.

Sherlock swallowed, pushed the tablet down harder. "Finally, the naughty Sugar Baby was able to get all of his Sugar Daddy's long thick prick inside him. His Sugar Daddy said, 'I'm so proud of you of Baby for getting this monstrously thick prick into you without crying,' but the Sugar Daddy really wanted to hear his Sugar Baby cry. In any case, because he'd been 'very' naughty."

John could not resist. He pulled Sherlock's fingers out of his mouth. "He wouldn't have been naughty if his Sugar Daddy hadn't ignored him."

Sherlock groaned, but didn't resist as John resumed fellating Sherlock's fingers.

"As it happened, his Sugar Daddy had a way of giving his Sugar Baby a spanking while giving him his medicine. A way that would make his Sugar Baby cry out. He spanked his baby with the big thick knot at the base his long fat prick and his muscular thighs. The naughty Sugar Baby accepted his punishment happily. Greedily. He cried just like his Sugar Daddy had hoped. He yelled, 'Daddy, please I need my medicine. Please, Daddy. Stick me again with your prick.' And his Sugar Daddy pricked him over and over, until they were both ready."

John was more than ready. He really wanted Sherlock's cock inside him, but given what he knew of Sherlock's refractory period, what he needed first was to get Sherlock out of his clothes. He let go of Sherlock's wrist and reached down under the tablet. Sliding his hand through the flap in the silky jim jams to grip Sherlock's rock hard cock.

Sherlock pulled his hand out of John's mouth and scrabbled at the fuzzy flap of John's jim jams.

It didn't take more than a few jerks for either of them to get themselves and the sheets very sticky. They lay there with the starlight streaming by the wide window by their bed, the only sound the sound of their breathing and the ship's engines.

Finally John sat up and picked up the fallen tablet. "And the Sugar Daddy gave the naughty Sugar Baby a big fat knot that made him cry out, 'Oh, Daddy,' as his Daddy filled him with medicine. But the naughty Sugar Baby wasn't cured. Oh, no." John licked his lips. "He needed a full round of injections."

"The end," said Sherlock very quickly.

"But it would be very dangerous to stop treatment before getting the full round of medicine. I'm a doctor. I know that sort of thing." What John knew was that Sherlock's cock was going to feel amazing. It was going to fix everything if he could just get it inside of him.

Sherlock scrabbled away from John as if John were dangerous. As if John were the larger and stronger of the two of them.

John peeled himself out of his silly flannels and wiped himself down with them. Normally, he'd have felt sleepy after coming like that, but instead he felt energized.

"You know," whispered John, "I was already sexually active if I'm the age I think I am."

Was rewarded with a growl from Sherlock.

"You remember. I told you about my first time with Tadpole. You remember Tadpole, we met him last year."

"I remember your adolescent crush was an android," said Sherlock in a somewhat strangled tone of voice.

John had a point and he was sticking to it. "I fucked Tadpole when I was this age. He put his knot in me and came inside me."

Sherlock glared. "You told me you were caught and that your parents had to send you to a school to control your behavior."

"Mmm… yeah, that's where I developed my priest kink." John ran his fingers over his cock, already semi-hard again. "Please. It'll feel so good. You'll feel so tight inside me. Please," he arched his back, feeling the need to move, "fuck me. I need it."

Sherlock shuddered, but far from jumping over the bed, throwing John down and embedding himself in John, he rolled away from John. Ran out of their quarters. Leaving John alone. Lonely. Aching. Needing Sherlock, who wouldn't help him with one little thing.

One thick delicious thing.

And he was soaking wet again.

Again.

He fucked himself with one of their toys.

Sadly.

Alone.

He came, but it didn't help.

He curled into an aching lonely ball and cried into Sherlock's pillow.

Then he added more to the Sugar Baby story.

A lot more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RVN is not a real thing. DNA and RNA are real things.  
> http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rybo-viroxic-nucleic  
> John is talking about hormones that are produced in teens that are part of development.  
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5102198/  
> Although, John has a few more hormones going on than normal.


	6. Thil POV

Thil wanted to pick the story tonight. Thil wanted Papa Ishros – because he would do all the voices – to read them the story of Aidalas the Constant before bed. He loved the part about Aidalas defended the honor of his shen Mother in a duel with the clan leader that had tried to kill her after slaying all of the clan leader's troops, but Papa Shroleb said, "That's not actually a children's story."

Thil and his twin, Shor, giggled, because that was the point of all the stories Auntie Harry sent them. They were for big kids. Still Thil protested, "But it's a good story."

Papa Shroleb said, "It's Shirlaas' turn tonight."

Shor groaned because that could only mean one thing. They'd be read the book Papa Ishros wrote about them. It was nice that there were drawings of their quarters and their life on the Bakerstreet.

"Why's it called Twins, Papa Ishros?" asked his little sister, Shrilaas, even though she perfectly well knew. They all knew. Ugh.

"Because Andorians didn't have twins until the four of you," said Papa Shroleb before bopping her nose. Like he always did when she asked.  He bopped Keraass nose, because if Shrilaas got a bop, Keraass had to have one too or she'd scream.

Thil remembered everyone staring at them the last time they'd visited their grandparents. Shor hadn't liked it, but Thil had told everyone that it wasn't polite to stare and then they'd laughed at him as if he'd said something funny and not told them to stop making Shor uncomfortable, and then he'd gotten in trouble for kicking.

"Yay," said Shrilaas, clapping her hands. She'd enjoyed the attention and even drew a picture for a lady who really liked the book.

"That's right," said Papa Ishros. "Uzaveh and our ancestors blessed us when we boarded the Bakerstreet and so we had the four of you."

That was when Thil put something together. He couldn't believe he'd never noticed it before. He leaned in close to Shor. "Did you hear Papa Ishros?"

"Yeah," said Shor. "Why?"

Thil whispered even softer. "Uzaveh blessed Aidalas the Constant when he was born. And Veraaeh, and Keelor."

"Oh," said Shor, whose eyes widened before looking worried. "I'm not ready for an adventure."

Thil bumped his shoulder against Shor's. "Uzaveh won't send us one 'til we're ready. And we already know all sorts of good stuff." After all, they had an entire drive full of useful audio books from Aunti Harry that their parents had forgotten to delete.

Shor looked comforted.

They settled down to listen to Papa Ishros tell them a story about themselves.


	7. Billy's POV

Billy felt the warmth of the communicator hanging from the chain around his neck. Warm from his heart. He couldn't help but smile feeling it there. Couldn't help but pull it up from its nestling place and brush it against his lips like some giddy teenager in one of the entertainments modern Humans liked to watch.

When Billy had been a teenager, he'd been in hiding from Colonel Green and yet ached to get out his hiding place even knowing it could get him killed. Mum had explained he'd gotten the gene for juvenile heat from his grandfather and his heats would be out of control until he got older. True enough that he'd been unable to control himself. He'd gotten out and easing that ache had left him with Connor to take care of and worry about and love.

So nothing at all like a giddy teenager in a drama when he'd actually been a teen.

Everything giddy now.

His smile spread at thinking about the ship's recent visit to Starbase 168. Squeezed his legs together a little at the memory of the night he'd been able to steal away with Chin there while Connor was at a sleepover in the holodeck.

A bitter sweet pang. When it had come time to leave, Chin had repeated her request that Billy come away with her. That he and Connor could have a life with Chin somewhere that Chin was always very vague on the details about. A reason Billy could never bring himself to say yes. Always simply ask for more time. Steal another moment and ask for more time.

Connor came out of the bedroom into the living area of their quarters and Billy stuffed away the communicator hastily. But Connor didn't give him the worried look he generally gave when he saw Billy mooning over the communicator. Instead he said, "I'm worried about Eva." He looked at her wide eyed. "Ms. Hebron was turned into teenager in an accident. It's all over the Augment channel on Bakerchat."

"I haven't… let's see what you're worrying about." Billy logged on to the Augment channel and scrolled through strings of comments. It seemed John and Ms. Hudson had been turned into teenagers along with Lucy.

He didn't quite understand the content of the thread, as often happened. Either John had the gene for juvenile heat, which given everyone in the future seemed to know everything about their genes, he should know and he should stay as isolated as possible, or he didn't and there wasn't a problem.

There wasn't anything about Lucy in the thread other than her post about what had happened.

"See," said Connor pointing to Lucy's post. "Eva's mum was turned into a kid. Eva has got to be upset. Maybe I should go over and talk to her."

Billy's heart squeezed looking at Connor's expression. How much he cared about all his friends. About everyone. "It's awfully late, but let me talk to Mr. Washington."

It would seem that Eva was awake, crying, and Freddy Washington was at his wits end.

Connor was deployed to make Eva feel better.

Billy tried not to feel guilty at the thought that with Connor sleeping over at Freddy's, Billy had their quarters to himself. That without a child that could walk in on him, he could replicate a dildo. That he could open a communication channel with Chin, who answered readily. That he didn't get much sleep, and by the end of the communication he ached in new ways.

Still, when Chin repeated her question, he asked for more time and sighing Chin said, "I'll wait," and then in a lowered voice, "I love you."

Blushing, giddy, Billy whispered, "Love you," to the communicator before getting rid of the evidence of being an adult with adult desires, and with the communicator nestled against his heart, he went to sleep.


	8. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock could not think.

Correction, he could not think of anything beyond going back to his quarters and doing what John wanted. What he wanted.

If he hadn't known that his every gene had been architected and examined before he'd been gestated in a uterine replicator, he'd have thought that he was missing a key component in his V1RL87 gene, which should have allowed him to detect from John's pheromones that this was a pseudoheat and not a juvenile heat, which in turn would have circumvented a desire to rut with John.

Should. Would have thought if he could think of anything but John.

John's scent clinging to his skin where John had touched him.

If he were a teenager, he'd have an excuse. The vomeronasal organ didn't fully develop until the late teens.

Then again Mummy wasn't fool proof at genetic analysis. Euros was proof of that.

Perhaps the regions Euros had damaged in Sherlock's brain were to blame. Perhaps this was another sign of the damage. That Sherlock was not quite right. A bit not good. Because all he wanted was to go back to their quarters and do many things that did not involve sleep.

Feelings made even worse by the fact that he'd missed John while he'd been away. Desperately. Had told himself John's absence was an opportunity to work on his experiments, but in the deepest rooms of himself, he knew he'd avoided their quarters because he hadn't wanted to sleep in their empty bed. Be in rooms that would be empty of everything but John's scent for weeks.

He made himself walk away from their quarters, until he was in the gym. He should have gone to the cargo bay, but he couldn't think of anything but forcing his errant member into ignoring what it wanted. On reflection, he tucked said member back into his pajamas.

He didn't need to exercise, but he'd heard it was an activity that could wear a Human body out. He loaded a set of barbells with every weight that would fit on them and lifted.

And lifted.

And lifted.

Donovan came in. Sherlock was aware that she often could not sleep. Hudson's jibber jabber was that she felt displaced in this century. A subject Sherlock was more than happy not to discuss.

They ignored each other in the quiet gym. Until Hunter ran in, drenched in sweat and wearing jogging clothes, with Julian, who for some reason had altered his program to look as if he too had working sweat ducts.

She looked at both of them. "Uh… Captain, are you aware that you're wearing pj's?"

"Obviously?"

She got a cup of water from the replicator.

Sherlock used the showers in the gym, replicated a fresh uniform, and went to the cargo bay. Determined to solve this and quickly.

He needed John back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The V1RL87 gene is one that humans share with rodents that detects pheromones. There is such a thing as a vomeronasal organ. That said, the gene could be inactive in humans. The organ is vestigial. In Augments, it's active. Because SCIENCE! And genetic engineering. Course, there's more than one gene associated with pheromone reception, but nothing brings out the flow of a story like a long list of letters and numbers.  
> https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=120001&page=1  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomeronasal_organ
> 
> Uterine replicators being a term borrowed from the science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold to skip coming up with a name for a mechanical uterus.


	9. Sally Donovan's POV

She didn't have to admit fucking anything, but if she did, she have said she was surprised to see the captain doing the sensible thing and working out to deal a cure to whatever brain weasels came when your fucking husband turned into a fucking teenager. He looked miserable. Puppy eaten by the embodiment of evil miserable. Probably a few kittens thrown into the psychic goo for good measure.

Sally's fucking teen years had been a fucking waste. Course, technically she'd still been one when she joined Starfleet at eighteen. Running. Singing cadence. So, not all bad.

Holmes didn't sing cadence. He lifted too many weights without a spotter like a moron. She kept an eye on him, but he didn't crush himself.

Hunter came in. She had every excuse not to talk to the captain. Julian was there, but she talked to the misery goo cloud that was their captain like an idiot.

Sally hit the showers to get away from that shite and went on shift.

She about dropped her fucking jaw when Hudson, looking like a fucking teeny bopper in one of those weird blue uniform dresses that Sally had no idea why was in the uniform code, sashayed onto the bridge showing too much leg and too much fucking boob in that weird asymmetri-fuck cleavage window that was part of that particular uniform. Hudson smiled at the bridge as if everyone didn't fucking know that fucking teenagers were still forming their fucking frontal lobes at whatever the fuck age Hudson was. Made it difficult for them to fucking tell the difference between risk and reward. That was the fucking reason Sally's guidance counselor had given for Sally not being able to join up when she was fifteen and miserable. Starfleet didn't take teenagers before eighteen. End stop.

Other thing that was the fuck wrong, Hudson couldn't hear Sally thinking any of that. Since she couldn't, Sally gave her a little help. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

The smile disappeared from Hudson's face. "I beg your pardon."

"Yeah," Sally crossed her arms and refused to feel as if she'd kicked a kitten. Hudson was not kittenish. Normally. She also wasn't normally wearing six inch fucking heels on her uniform boots.

And what did Hudson do? She fucking sat down on the command couch and curled the fuck up there.

Sally tried again. Coming around to face Hudson. "You should remove yourself from duty right the fuck now for the good of the crew. You don't have the…" which since Sally wasn't actually a doctor she couldn't remember what the medical terms that the guidance counselor had fed her a literal fucking hundred years ago, so she shifted that sentence. "Your brain is still forming. Quick what am I thinking?"

Hudson crossed her arms, which only emphasized the non-standard uniform she was wearing. "Telepathy is not a prerequisite to command. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." She got up and sashayed her way into the ready room, which was just wrong.

Sally had to do something she really didn't want to do. She tapped her com. "Captain, you should come to the bridge and take the con."

"No," was the very terse reply.

Which fine. Sally glared at space until the next shift came on. She'd just have to keep a close eye to make sure things didn't go from SNAFU to FUBAR as her old drill instructor used to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hudson is wearing a short version of the Deana Troi turquoise dress.  
> http://www.thegeektwins.com/2014/06/7-bizarre-facts-about-deanna-trois.html
> 
> SNAFU: Situation Normal, all fucked up.  
> FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all repair.
> 
> What Sally is thinking about is this,  
> https://knowledgenuts.com/2014/07/25/the-difference-between-teenage-brains-and-adult-brains/
> 
> Which to remind everyone is how Sherlock's brain works. Because Euros. Because brain damage. So both he and John are basically now teens. Well, John just got all the hormones dumped on him at once, which is why his emotions are so out of wack. Um... science...


	10. Martha Hudson's POV

Martha had been so excited when she woke up that morning. Her girls were higher and more pert than they'd been in years. She could wear heels without pain. She could lift her leg up next to her head while wearing heels. She could do cartwheels. Splits. She'd wanted to celebrate.

She'd ordered the most enjoyable uniform of those available, while still being far more of a uniform than the times Sherlock, the dear, had shown up on the bridge wearing a sheet, silk loungewear, and that memorable occasion wearing nothing but body paint and a leather collar. The scamp.

As she'd walked down the hall, she'd wanted people to see how fun it was to be a teenager.

She couldn't read their minds. She couldn't hear them saying anything really. They were looking at her, but she couldn't tell what they thought. She'd felt alone in a crowded room. She'd heard that Betazeds who lost the ability to hear thoughts were subject to depression. Subject to suicidal ideation.

She hadn't lost her abilities.

She was young again and carefree. She was very firm with herself about that. And yet. And yet. Betazed's didn't look at intimacy in the same way as humans. For a Betazed, there was the pure physicality of the shift, preceded by years of delicately entangling thoughts. Learning the best fit. Tendrils of imagined desire and sudden the repel of sudden resentments.

Technically, Martha had never quite managed it.

Instead she'd sent herself off into a life of catching surface thoughts flung by low walled minds.

Now all there were was high walled faces staring at her.

She reminded herself that she was young again. She had an herbal soother and reminded herself that she was carefree.

Martha wasn't isolated. She was going to enjoy being a teen again.

She was absolutely determined.

Determined.

She was stuck in the ready room, because the prospect of facing Donovan had suddenly felt overwhelming. Intimidating, which was ridiculous. Martha looked and felt better than she had in years.

For the fun of it, she got up and kicked as high as her head. Something she hadn't been able to do in years. What did it matter that she couldn't hear anyone's thought's.

The words they were expressing certainly weren't to her liking.

Like listening to Donovan telling her that she should relieve herself of duty for the good of the crew.

Like listening to each Department Head argue with her over crew rotations for hours as if her current physical appearance had anything to do with her capabilities to assign crew to certain duties.

To a degree much of her career had revolved around being under estimated, but that had been when she was infiltrating organizations and disrupting them for the good of the Federation. Not working as a part of an organization. A ship. A family.

Her family.

She reminded herself that she was going to enjoy being young again. Have fun with it. After all, there had always been the implicit understanding that whether Sherlock was there or not, she was the adult on the bridge.

Sh'Alaack had actually looked at her and said, "Um… I'm sure that's… fun isn't really what I'm trying to… of course engineering is fun, but it's not supposed to be… I cannot have Ensign Brand assigned to warp nacelle calibration, just because… I'm a bonded Andorian… I am uninterested in the tightness of his… prosterior."

Which really, Martha had only been joking about getting an opportunity to look at Ensign Brand's tight arse, and after all of Sh'Alaack's complaints about not having enough personnel to complete the calibration. She'd thought it would be funny. That Sh'Alaack would laugh.

Normally, she'd been able to finesse her way through a little verbal misstep by taking a little mental peek.

She was beginning to think cartwheels couldn't compensate for the loss of her psychic abilities. It was the opposite of imposter's syndrome. She knew she belonged, and yet face after face looked at her as if she was a stranger.

By the third day, she took the afternoon off to resume her Baritsu exercises. She hadn't been able to do more than slow Baritsu in years. While she no longer had the muscle mass of her twenties, Baritsu had always been less about the raw power than the flow of energy. Her body might be different, but muscle memory remained.

She was feeling much calmer and sweatier when Lucy asked her to come to the Botany lab.

Martha passed Cho in the hallway. She looked upset about something. Martha didn't immediately know if Cho was angry or sad or had forgotten lunch. Her calm melted away leaving only sticky sweat.

She went into Lucy's lab and had to suppress a feeling of resentment. Lucy was managing to continue her life unabated. Her course of career was to deal with plants, not people.

For some reason, Sherlock was standing by the door. John was clinging to his arm and rubbing himself against his side like a cat in heat. Sherlock looked at her with wide eyes. "Hudson." His voice was at least two octaves higher. Was he angry? Frustrated? Frightened? She didn't know.

The air filtration unit was running at full blast, which given the level of pheromones the two by the door were producing was understandable. If Martha were still over forty, her eyes would be watering from hay fever, she had no doubt.

Lucy cleared her throat. "I've successfully regrown the Draebidium Calimus to maturity." She called up the monitor and told them all a great deal about her examination of the fruit produced by the force gown Draebidium Calimus that would have been so much more interesting if she could have taken a break by listening to whatever naughty thing John was inevitably thinking. "So we know that we'll mature normally if engineering is not able to turn us back."

"It doesn't matter," said John. "Sherlock's going to fix this. You're going to fix this right?"

Martha might not be able to read minds, but really Sherlock had never been particularly hard to read. Oh, specific details behind his thought processes was one thing, but how he felt about John was painfully obvious. So she imagined his thoughts were deeply invested in how best to save his marriage given John's current state.

Except what he did was yelp a strangled, "yes!" disentangle himself from John, and darted away down the hall as if Martha had suggested he do some paperwork.

"Sherlock, what the fuck! I was talking to you!" John kicked a wall and sprinted after him.

Martha had no idea what was going on.

Lucy said, "I think they've been sleeping together."

Martha said, somewhat absently, "You're a bit late to the party if you've just noticed that."

What she was thinking was that it had been three days and Sherlock had no theories. It was entirely possible there was no solution.

She was thinking that she might have to grow up again.

What anyone else was thinking, she had no way of knowing and she'd have to wait a year to find out.

It was a depressing thought.


	11. John's POV

Getting Sherlock to fuck him was all John could think about.

But he wouldn't. John just wanted to be fucked by his husband and he wouldn't. He was nearly thirty years old for Christ's sake! It wasn’t fair!

He knew Sherlock wanted him. He could smell it in his scent. Feel it in the way his cock went instantly hard under his thigh when John sat in his lap for a cuddle.

He knew Sherlock loved to be touched and to touch John. Loved it. But he kept running away when John brought up the solution to the ache they were both feeling.

He dreamed about going into heat. Not that he would. He hadn't had his first heat until his late teens. Years away, but the thought of Sherlock losing control made him wet and hard at the same time. Wetter. Harder.

"Don't you agree, John," said Julian.

"Hmmmm," said John who really had not been paying attention.

"We need make plans for what we'll do if this can't be reversed," said Julian. "I can cover all the duty shifts, of course, but your level of distraction has been very high, and your mood swings are not the best thing for patients."

John replicated a flannel to wipe the sweat from his forehead at the sudden flash of heat. The lights were too bright. He went to his quarters to see if Sherlock would show up like he'd used to do and fuck him through the mattress, but he didn't.

John dimmed the lights and tried to ease the pain in his back. Child's pose. Commando crawl on the floor. Rubber ball under his back. Nothing worked.

It was ridiculous. John was alone in his quarters when he had a perfectly good husband.

He jumped up, suddenly furious. Determined to find Sherlock and get what he needed.


	12. Eva's POV

Eva missed her mommy. She loved Daddy. He read her Eva's favorite story about Lighta, a lightbulb, who was worried that no one ever saw her when she shown her light on foggy nights, and her best friend, Chaira, who was a chair and kept her company in her tower by the sea. But then a Queen, Hearta, and her heart, Queena, on their ship with golden sails got lost in the fog and the lightbulb turned on at the top of a tower and guided the Queen and her heart home to a safe harbor, but he didn't read it like Mommy did.

But she was a big girl and couldn't cry just because Mommy wasn't Mommy anymore. Mummy had come by Daddy's place a few times, but just looking at her made Eva feel squirmy.

She 'splained it to Connor and he listened like he always did. Not like Sestre, who thought she was silly and little and stuff, and not like the twins, but like a Connor. Actually, they were both Augment omegas. He didn't interrupt her or anything while she talked.

He asked, "Do you want a hug or do you want to know what I think?"

Eva thought about that. "Could I have both?"

"Sure," said Connor. He hugged her and she breathed in his warm milk and vanilla scent that made her think of Mommy. He said, "When I was little, I lost Mum for a while. Then we travelled in time. Things like that can make everything feel like you're standing on marbles."

Eva pulled away and looked at Connor, cause that was 'xactly how she felt. Xactly! "I feel like I'm going to fall."

"You should write her a letter. Say how you feel. What worries you and how you miss her. I bet she misses you too."

"That's what Daddy said." Eva sighed. "Will you help me write it?"

"Sure," said Connor, because Connor always said yes when she asked that sort of question.

That was why she was going to marry him when she got older.

She hadn't told him that yet.

He replicated colored pencils and pens for her so she could color her letter.


	13. Sherlock's POV

Sh'Alaack suggested a stupid theory for what could have happened.

"Wrong."

Stonn suggested an equally idiotic theory.

"Wrong."

Sherlock didn't understand why everyone and everything was wrong. Not that he had an idea what had happened.

Sherlock crushed the tritanium panel in his hand from what remained of the starboard side of shuttlepod 221C. While he was strong, he wasn't that strong. Something had affected the metal at a molecular level.

A week of analysis and he was no closer to determining the cause of what had happened to John and the others than when he'd started.

A week of John's scent filling their quarters. Their bed. Luxurious. Rich. With a touch of sultry umami. Rubbing against the walls. Constantly leaning against chairs and raising his pert posterior in Sherlock's direction. Being extremely unsubtle about what he wanted from Sherlock.

Sleeping in the same bed was a fiction primarily composed of John angrily shouting that Sherlock didn't love him if he proposed not sleeping together, and wriggling his very flexible body against Sherlock's.

It was all Sherlock could do not to rip off his clothes and thrust into the wet warm welcome he could smell was waiting for him. Wanting him. Needing him. 

Also, John's claim that his body was over the age of sixteen was clearly false.

Sherlock had made a study of John's appearance at every age with assistance from John's mother. John was not practically seventeen, which made him practically eighteen.

He was ruminating on that when John stomped into the cargo bay. "You're avoiding me again! You don't get to avoid me! We're married!"

Sh'Alaack and Stonn simultaneously remembered meetings they were late for and left the room.

"I am aware of that fact!" His tone was sharper than he'd intended, but even with anger in his scent, Sherlock could smell John's arousal. Ever present. "But given how you keep interrupting me, I have to assume you don't want me to find out how to change you back. Do you want to stay like this?"

"What I fucking want is for my husband to stop treating me like a child! I am not a child! And what the fuck, Sherlock! You child locked the holodeck against me!"

There was a roar of blood in Sherlock's ears. A dizzy glow of anger. "Which you would only know if you attempted to fornicate with a hologram!" The idea of John, his John, coupling even with light made him want to growl. Claw at more metal. Throw John over the remains of the fuselage and bury himself inside his tight, burning heat.

Sherlock swallowed.

"Fucking hell, Sherlock! Look at me when I talk to you!"

"I am not avoiding you," said Sherlock. "I'm working on a solution to this problem." Sherlock glaring at the metal. "Perhaps another metallurgical analysis." More than anything, he wished it had been him who had regressed to an earlier age. That it was him straddling John's lap in the evenings. Being held through his tears. Being smaller and more fragile than John for once. Not entirely fragile admittedly, as he'd still be him, and even at John's present age, Sherlock had been stronger than the majority of the adult Augment population on Earth.

John came closer. His scent that terrifying intoxicating blend that smelled so similar to his scent when he was in heat. That filled every corner of their quarters.

_Was blowing through every room of Sherlock's mind palace. Leaving everything steamed and foggy and…_

Sherlock wasn't going to be able to hold out if they had to wait for John to mature normally.

Sherlock crushed another piece of tritanium. Purely to provide an additional sample. "I will solve this." He wanted to shout that he couldn't think, because all he could think about was burying himself inside John. Being claimed by him.

"Maybe…" John licked his lips. His hands now loose by his hips. "You just need a break." He put his hand on Sherlock's arm. "We could go to the holodeck together. Then I wouldn't need to fuck light."

If John was not going to remove his hand, Sherlock would have to remove his arm from under it. He turned away, but that did not move John's scent. The tingling feeling that remained from where John had touched him. "I will not share coitus while you are this age."

"Sherlock. I'm still in here. Still an adult. And, and, and, I'd had sex by this age."

Sherlock did not want to hear more about John's activities with another alpha. He wanted more tritanium to crush, but actual tritanium.

"I know you're not comfortable with fucking me through a round of Naughty Student gets Knotted, even though it would be amazing. Even though I'd grip you so tight. But," he lowered his voice, "we could go to Hogwarts and do the scenario where the wicked Potion master uses his magic wand on his poor unsuspecting student. You wouldn't even have to touch me. I know exactly where the toys are. You could let them do the touching and wank on the other side of the room."

Sherlock immediately flushed. He knew precisely the set of toys John was thinking of. Precisely the scenario, which would be fine. More than fine. It was true, Sherlock wouldn't have to touch John.

Although, John's obsession with a British escapism story about fighting a rising evil that never so much as mentioned the actual rising evil going on all around the author had never made much sense to Sherlock.

It should be fine.

He found himself following John as he tugged him away from the debris.

Sherlock should stay. He should focus on solving this.

John raised blue eyes at him. "I need this. I can't think."

Sherlock opened his mouth to say that was not a new situation and said, "Very well. This evening."

It would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Eugenics Wars in Star Trek were in the 90s. After that, WWIII. So, in this universe the Harry Potter series would have been written in that context. An odd thought when I was first planning this series of stories for where/when to get these two characters into some Harry Potter roleplay.


	14. Bihr Sh'Alaack's POV

No force in the universe could have made her remain and listen to Doctor Watson and Captain Holmes' mating ritual, but it had reminded Bihr to check in on Lucy.

Bihr listened to Lucy.

She read the letter that Eva had sent Lucy. She made more of that tea that Lucy liked.

While admittedly, Lucy's appearance was odd. Smoother and softer than previously, Bihr wasn't familiar enough with Human growth patterns to be able to see a great deal of difference.

She braced herself for the inevitable question. "How is the research going?"

She sipped her own cup of Bajoran fizz. The bubbles pleasant on her tongue. Still she owed her friend the truth. "Not well." She repressed a feeling of failure. That she was somehow an imposter in her role. As the head of engineering, she should have been able to have discovered the cause of the problem by now."

Lucy sighed. "So, Sherlock hasn't come up with any theories."

Bihr did not want to say that their captain was clearly in the grip of some sort of mating frenzy and had one thought on his mind and it was not related to spatial anomalies and their effect on soft tissue. She was aware that this was something of a sore spot for Lucy, who believed that Doctor Watson should stay well away from the captain.

Bihr was an engineer. An Andorian. A friend. She asked, "Have you written Eva back?"

Lucy looked at her startled. Her eyes wide. "No. I… I didn't even. Thank you." She hugged Bihr, which she'd appeared to be more inclined to do since regressing.

Bihr left her there typing. There was nothing Bihr could do to help with writing. Unlike Ishros, she had no way with words.

Still that night, she read the bedtime story to her children. It was Thil's night to pick. So inevitably, he picked Aidalas the Constant. There was a certain warm comfort in a story of revenge and honor sent by a woman with whom Bihr had made a separate peace.

She did wonder if anyone had told Harry that her twin was now not a twin. Looking at her own sets of twins, different in each their own ways, she resolved that if it they were unable to resolve this issue, she would make sure that Doctor Watson contacted her.


	15. John's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: John and Sherlock have sex. This activity is only tangentially related to John's physical (if not mental) age. 
> 
> Also, Harry Potter scenario, which normally goes a little differently when John and Sherlock use that program on the holodeck.

John reserved the whole evening in the holodeck.

Technically, he'd used it that morning too. Since a direct approach wasn't working with Sherlock, he'd figure maybe a scenario would work. After all, scenarios had played a big role in their relationship over the last nine years.

He'd gone to swap out a nameless student in the 'Wicked Potion Master magics Philosopher's Stone' scenario for a simulation of Tadpole Phelps. If Sherlock agreed to take part in the scenario, he knew Sherlock would notice that one of the characters was now John's first fuck. Sherlock studied their scenarios backwards and forwards. He'd met Tadpole – admittedly as an adult with his consciousness uploaded into the body of an android.

Tadpole had looked so young that morning. Unformed. Not really all that interesting. But something in the alpha scent that the holodeck simulated for Tadpole had had John trying to kiss him. Tripping the child lock.

Tripping his temper.

Tripping his shame that lived under his temper. After all, he'd given his parents a lot of trouble back when he'd actually been the age he appeared to be. Lived up to the preconceptions society had about omegas, but without the biological excuse of heat.

He and Harry both, he now understood, had acted out in all sorts of ways.

None of that mattered. Sherlock was going to the holodeck.

John was going to get what he needed.

John made the special preparations for that particular scenario. He slid the cock sleeve over his cock. He lubed up both the vaginal and anal stimulators before inserting them. Although, the vaginal one hardly needed it. John had been constantly slick with secretions for the last week. He could smell his own arousal when he changed pants. He'd taken to rubbing them on Sherlock's pillow as soon as he left to investigate. Rubbing his body all over their bed. All over their room.

He dressed. Putting on clothes felt wrong. Too hot. But he needed clothes for the scenario, which would get him what he needed. White Shirt with Gryffindor tie. Tidy whitey pants. Jeans. Socks, also in Gryffindor colors. Trainers. Black robe over the whole thing with an extra rub from that morning's pants on the folds of fabric.

It was hard to focus. The lights in the room were too bright. He kept stopping to scent Sherlock's pillow. The brush he used to comb his hair. If John hadn't known better, he would have said that all of his symptoms for the last week were textbook descriptions of an omega going into heat. But that couldn't be true. While there was admittedly very little medical research on Augments, the consensus was that while designing sentient beings who lost control of their minds in heat and rut was a cock move – okay that was John's consensus – at least it didn't occur until their late teens, when Augments were better equipped to handle it.

Blah, blah science. He was vibrating with anticipation. As he filled a ruckpack with a few supplies, he threw in the pillowcase so he could scent it as he walked to the holodeck. His body full with all the devices rubbing inside him.

He stepped into the holodeck and immediately knew he needn't have bothered with the pillowcase. The room was full of the scent of an alpha, his alpha, who had exactly what John needed.

Sherlock was standing by the chalkboard in the Hogwarts potion's classroom. His back was to the door as he wrote something from Jabir. Because Sherlock hadn't read a popular children's series, but he'd read all the medieval alchemists. Sherlock's deep voice did lovely things to John's flesh around the toys. "Mr. Watson. Late a…" pausing as John's own scent reached him. He cleared his throat. "Again."

For a moment, John's brain fritzed. He wanted to launch himself at his alpha, but there was a scenario. The play must… go on or something. "Sorry, Professor." Ever more aware of the stimulators lodged inside him. John sat down at the only empty chair.

The holographic students were already there. They looked at John sympathetically. It was part of the scenario that the potions professor always picked on the plucky boy from Gryffindor, because Professor Holmes was resisting his desire for the boy from Gryffindor and this was the day when the master decided that he'd secretly claim what he wanted with magic.

Thus the toys, which were tied to signals from the wand.

They were like shadows all around him. The only real thing was Sherlock.

"If Mr. Watson could manage to pay attention, perhaps I wouldn't have to repeat myself." Sherlock loomed over him. His black curls stark on his pale cheeks. He looked amazing as always in the black robe.

John pressed his legs together at the wetness between his thighs.

"I said," Sherlock reached down and tapped the back of John's hand, "everyone take out their cauldrons."

John waved his wand, Sherlock's body hot at his back. Wonderful. Lovely. The scenario called for Sherlock to be on the other side of the room. Not bending close and breathing John's scent.

The black iron cauldron that appeared was almost a surprise. John forced out the words, "Sorry, Professor Holmes."

Sherlock hummed and stepped away quickly, leaving John swaying. Sweating. Too hot for all these clothes. Aching. His back ached. He rubbed against the table, but that didn't help his restlessness. He arched his back into open space, balancing by pushing up with his knees under the lip of the well secured lab table. That didn't ease the ache. Another textbook indication of heat, which wasn't possible.

Sherlock coughed like that old man in that classical song by the Police.

He cleared his throat and said, "Today, we will be studying uh….simple transmutations. If I…if…Mr. Watson can keep his attention on the… scenario." He wrote some gibberish on the board. Actual gibberish. John knew his Jabir given that they had done this scenario a few times and ways over the years.

A note appeared on John's parchment. "Sorry, Professor Holmes is riding you so hard." Tadpole looked him from across the potions desk. He looked so young to John.

John made himself wink at him. This simulation of hopeful youth. Actually, thinking about Tadpole was a little sad given how things had worked out. But even as Tadpole blushed, from across the classroom, Sherlock waved his wand and muttered a spell.

The spell.

Which dealt a spell on any sorrow for childhood friends.

Both the anal and vaginal stimulators quietly vibrated inside John, stimulating his prostate and graphenberg spot simultaneously. John swallowed a gasp. He hadn't remembered the lowest setting feeling so intense in the past.

"Mr. Watson, is it even remotely possible that you could pay attention to what I am saying."

"Sorry sir," squeaked John. "I don't know what's come over me." Even John could sent his own pheromones blooming out of him at the sensations.

"You're usual lack of attention presumably," said Sherlock. He waved his wand again, and the folds in the sheath around John's cock rhythmically moved like the fingers of a hand.

John was supposed to be reacting to the "unexpected" sensations. He came instead, which hadn't really been the plan, but he went with it like a photon torpedo.

His plan was to flirt with Tadpole. The rules for scenarios that they'd established years ago was that if John flirted with a character other than Sherlock, he got to have a spanking or paddling. Sherlock wasn't that into corporal punishment, but he loved aftercare. John loved both. It was all good. Very good.

But Tadpole was just a kid. Hard to focus on with the toys working John. With the scent of an alpha filling the small room. His alpha. The one he'd claimed almost a decade before. The one he'd chosen to breed him through all his heats.

Which… where had that thought even… John made himself focus. He meant to magic Tadpole a note that would read, "Want to meet under the bleachers at the Quidditch field after class?" But words were hard. Focus was hard.

What he sent Tadpole was more of a dirty drawing that had Tadpole gasping and looking at him in surprise.

Sherlock's waved his wand. "Accio." The parchment flew into his hand. Sherlock looked at it. "Everyone, out."

A kid from Slytherin snickered at the back before shuffling out. "Watson's gonna get it."

John raised his head, as if embarrassed, and certainly hoped so. He gripped the side of the potion desk. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on.

The students filed out, leaving John sitting on the stool. Sherlock staring at him from across the room. Just breathing. Wide eyed. He said, "You're… But you can't be… I."

John flicked his wand at the door. "Colloportus!" The door to the potion's classroom slammed shut.

"Computer," said Sherlock, "Open the holodeck door."

The computer said, "This simulation has been reset to require a spell." John had been busy. Sherlock had command override, of course, so John needed to move fast.

John stood up. The stool falling over and he didn't care. "I flirted right in front of you."

"Not really flirting," said Sherlock holding up the parchment as if it were a shield.

"Rules," said John. That was the word he wanted. Rules.

Sherlock shook, his black robes fluttering around him like wanton storm clouds. Hopefully wanton. Wonderful mouthwatering scent.

John lifted his own robes, and yanked his jeans and pants down. Kicked them away. The toys were wrong. False. Not what he wanted. He tossed them as Sherlock, who caught them, hissing as they touched his skin. Sighing. A hitch in his breath.

John held his gaze and made a Lordis stretch using the potions table for leverage. John was burning up. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He wanted his alpha now. Deserved him.

The line he'd planned to say was, "Professor Holmes, I have an elixir that makes philosopher stones really hard when you use your wand." But words were… they slipped away like buildings in a fog. After all the stimulation. Waiting. Scent. His alpha. The one he'd chosen to breed with him nearly a decade ago was right there.

He grabbed his mate by his robe and dragged him into a kiss. Into a grapple. Biting. Scratching. Shouting as his alpha finally thrust inside John. Not even that far. Not even fully buried into him.

For a very brief moment, there was a moment of clarity and it was too much. Something was wrong. The thought swallowed by mental fog and need.

He moved wildly against his alpha in jerking motions. Now that his mate had stopped teasing him, was finally willing to breed him, he needing his mate deeper inside him.

The motion causing the head of his mate's cock to rub against John's over sensitized g…g…very good spot. John couldn't breathe at the pleasure. Air catching in his desperately heaving chest. His heartrate spiked. Blood pounded in his ears. Heat bloomed through his entire body.

He bucked even more wildly, until his mate bit his neck. Assuring him that he wasn't going anywhere. That he'd give John what he needed. Wanted him. Needed him too.

Waves of a sudden release clenched inside him. It was too much. Not enough.

John moved frantically. His mate's knot wasn't even inside John. John would die if his mate stopped. "Fuck! Harder! More! Now!"

They shifted against each other. A new angle finally allowing the swelling curve of his alpha's knot to press inside on the next inward stroke. Teasing him. Fucking with him. John needed everything his mate had to give him. He needed his knot. He managed to find the words. "Knot me! Now!"

A command that turned into a shout as his alpha answered by pulling back out, his cock head the only part of him inside John, only to push wetly back in. His mate's hands on his hips keeping John steady as the forward curve of his knot breached inside John.

He struggled to help his mate get his knot inside him. To delightfully push against John's very, very good spot. Sending him through rounds of release.

John almost blacked out from everything he was feeling. Everything about everything overwhelming him. He came again. He couldn't count how many times it had been. Too much. Too many. Not enough.

His mate should never stop. John needed him to never stop.

Wet flesh slapping flesh. The knot growing bigger, better each time it breached inside John.

Finally expanding to lock them together as his mate finally stopped teasing him and came. Finally.

Something inside John exploded. Not a single bead of light. Not a single firework, but the end of the finale when every firework was going off. Bliss blasting from the ends of his hair to his curling toes. Firmly knotted, John's body released egg-things so he could breed with his mate. Blearily, he thought that shouldn't be possible. Very blearily. Dimly. Vaguely.

Whatever.

Waves of release tossed John higher and higher up. His body clenching around his mate's cock. Muscles squeezing as he pulled his mate's come deep inside his very fertile body.

John floated on those waves. Panting.

His mate had marked John's neck in dozens of places. Replacing the marks that the transporter had erased. John's own marks on his mate had already healed. He bit him again affectionately.

When his mate pulled out, a flood of cum dripped down John's thighs. John felt wonderful. Knew he had chosen the best, most wonderful mate.

He butted his head against his mate's chest happily. "Love you."

His mate, such a good mate, rubbed his hands on John. Nuzzled him. Scented him.

"I..." The alpha turned to look around them. Seemingly confused by their surroundings. "I need to go."

That was the wrong answer. His mate wasn't going anywhere. "Need you here." John needed his mate again. Needed his mate inside him. Again. His mate was wearing too many clothes. Using some last bit of coherency, he said, "Computer, um…uh… change to our quarters."

He scrambled to strip off the rest of their clothes and jumped on the bed that appeared. His hand firmly on his mate's wrist to ensure he wouldn't go anywhere, but where John wanted him.


	16. Martha's POV

Martha was more than ready for Sherlock, anyone, to return her to her actual age.

"I think it's a mistake to leave this location," said Hunter, doubtfully.

"We must answer the distress call," said Donovan. "The science team on Ligos VII said that they needed immediate evacuation."

"I think we should get the captain," said Hunter.

"You do not want to do that," said Sh'Alaack. "He's taken the evening off to spend some time with Doctor Watson." Sh'Alaack rubbed her hands together as if washing them.

Martha said, "We don't need to disturb the captain. He has a great many things to work out with that husband of his." The decision was hers. The experience was hers. Yet there was that hesitation that came of all the doubting faces. Blank and unreadable. A decision had to be made. "We're going. We have all the information we need from this area of space."

"Aren't we going to leave a probe to study the energy anomaly if it reoccurs?" asked Hunter.

"Yes, fine," said Martha, which came out more sulky that it should have.

Donovan said, "Commander Hudson, you should relieve yourself from duty. This could be a fucking cluster fuck of situation that will require a clear chain of command."

Martha looked at her. If she had her telepathy, she could have read Donovan's thoughts. Would have known precisely how to turn the discussion the way it needed to go. "I know that I am competent. Therefore I have no intention of doing so. Dismissed."

They filed out of the captain's ready room.

Martha sat in the command couch. Her legs were certainly long enough to reach the floor. But she could see how the rest of the crew was looking at her. Did their expressions mean they were second guessing her? Didn't trust her? She didn't know.

This situation could not continue as it was, and yet it was probable that the only cure for unexpected youth was time.

Perhaps this time around she could avoid recruitment into a secret government agency. Although, it had been quite a lot of fun.


	17. Lucy's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A daimon is the Ferengi equivalent of a ship's captain.

After an exchange of letters and talking with Freddy, Lucy went to the schoolroom in the morning. A neutral location where Eva felt comfortable.

While the holographic teacher finished the older children's lesson on history of the Federation, she sat next to the younger children who were getting a writing lesson from Ishros.

Eva glanced at her a number of times, but was mostly quiet.

Much more quiet than normal.

Normally, she was always asking questions. Chatting with her friends when she was supposed to be paying attention. Now she was subdued.

It was catching, Lucy was feeling pretty subdued too. She hadn't seen her daughter in weeks while she'd been on Marilac, and now that she was back, she still wasn't able to be her mother.

She was Eva's mother. She always would be. How she looked didn't change that.

When the lesson was over, Eva went to sit next to Connor. She whispered in his ear. Connor had been around all of Eva's life, as far she remembered. She nodded as he said something and came over to where Lucy was waiting patiently.

Eva said, "Do you want to play a game?"

"I'd like that," said Lucy. They were in the middle of setting up a game of Andorian Cross-jump, when a red alert sounded. The ship shuddered. Hudson's voice briefly came on, "Ship's crew, I'm sure that we can …" and was cut off by Donovan saying, "I'm taking command of the ship. Crew to battle stations."

Eva blanched and said, in a high pitched voice, "Mommy, I'm scared."

"It's okay, sweetheart. This is the most secure room on the ship. That's why we picked it." Lucy helped Eva strap into a safety chair and then helped Billy and Ishros with the other children. Strapping in themselves as the ship shuddered.

The lights cut briefly and were replaced by emergency lighting. The ship's computer came over the loudspeaker and said, "The ship has been boarded and is now on lockdown. All but key systems have been locked out for crew safety.

"Mommy!" said Eva.

"It's okay. I'm right here," said Lucy. She unstrapped herself, hoping that the ship was now going to be stable and knelt next to Eva. "I've got you." She brushed back her little girl's hair with its braids and yellow ribbon. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

Ishros was trying to calm his children. The older ones wanted to be unstrapped so they could fight the invaders and the younger ones wanted their mamas. Only Connor was quiet. He and Billy were holding hands. Eyes on the door. Footsteps in the hallway.

A burly Klingon came inside the room. He was holding a disruptor rifle. He sneered at the lot of them. "It's a room full of children and two adults."

A Ferengi with a daimon's insignia pushed his way into the room and smiled. "Excellent. As the 110 Rule of Acquisition states, 'Use the children of your employees as leverage.' And since everyone on this ship is now in my indenture in exchange for not being spaced, you are all my employees." He sniffed the air. "There's even an adult omega. There's an excellent market for indentured omegas. I smell profit."

He was looking at Billy. He hadn't even looked at Lucy. She kept her arms around Eva to keep her calm. She wanted to do something. Anything. But the best thing she could do was keep Eva calm as possible. The Ferengi thought Lucy was a child. They needed to keep thinking Lucy was a child.

Another Ferengi came into the room.

Worse and worse.

The daimon said, "Take the adult omega to Profit's Aspiration and the Andorian down to the planet. We'll keep the children here as leverage in case our new employees get…" he gave a snaggle toothed grin, "ideas."

The second Ferengi said, "Cousin, are you trying to kill me. I'm not going over to the Profit's Aspiration now that we've taken this nice clean ship."

The daimon sighed. "Have a Klingon do it. It's what we're paying them for."

The Klingon grunted, looking bored. "There is no honor in kidnapping children."

"I'm not paying you for honor. I'm paying your for muscle," said the daimon. "Ah, I have it. Nom you watch the children, while the Klingons I'm paying to do as I say take the omega over to Profit's Aspiration and the Andorian to the planet."

Connor said, "I want to stay with my Mum." He laced his hand in Billy's. He stood up. He'd gotten so much taller in the last year. Losing his baby fat. Her heart ached for him. His expression was far older than it should have to be. "I don't want to be separated from him."

"Please, don't take my child from me," said Billy. Every ounce of fear Lucy was feeling just then in his voice.

The daimon shrugged. "He's not too young for us to sell his indentured papers, and," he put a hand over his heart, "perhaps we can sell your indenture together."

Lucy kept her arms around Eva. She met Ishros' gaze and said, "Us big kids will look after the little ones."

Ishros swallowed and nodded, as he was shoved out the door by the Klingon.

Lucy said, "Everyone come sit by me."

"Excellent," said the daimon. "An industrious worker. I'll be sure to make a note on your indenture papers."

"I'm scared," whispered Eva.

"Don't worry," said Lucy. "Captain Holmes and Doctor Watson will think of something. Don't worry." She hoped very fiercely and put a smile on her face to keep everyone calm.


	18. Sherlock's POV

His mate's body gripped him tightly. Greedily. Demanding attention. Milking and squeezing everything that Sherlock had to give. No sooner did his mate purr in satisfaction at how well Sherlock had pleased him, he butted his head against Sherlock's chest, yowled his eager demand to breed again.

He could do nothing but do as his beloved, the center of his everything, desired. Needed to ensure his mate stayed happy and satisfied all through his heat.

His mate's scent, overpowering as a jungle rain, drove Sherlock on. Ripe. Intoxicating. Maddening. Barely enough time between bouts to lick the bite marks Sherlock left on the omega's neck. On his chest. His thighs. Sherlock wanted to mark him everywhere. Needed to. Driven by the intensity of his scent. The feeling of him. The sound of him.

Trying. Trying. Trying to cling to a level of control.

Tight. Hot. Insatiable. More. More. More

Even as he lay on his back thrusting up into the omega, he couldn't resist the urge to lean up and nip at his mate's neck. Already ringed with his marks.

He felt proud that his mate had chosen him again. His mate's scent enriching wonderfully. Painfully. Driving Sherlock on to answer his mate's commands.

Too young.

Through the jungle fog of rut, he dimly thought that something was very wrong. Dim as the interior of a moon.

He put his hands on his mate's hips and thrust up into liquid velvet heat, while his omega shouted his approval. His face rosy with pleasure. His blue eyes wide and unfocused with release. His supple body moving up and down as he greedily impaled himself on Sherlock. Crying out once again as between them they managed to work Sherlock's knot fully inside him. His omega came. Squeezing Sherlock's prick and spattering come on Sherlock's chest with his own prick.

The floor was covered with it.

But at least the klaxons had stopped going off. Sherlock had not liked the red lights. Particularly when Sherlock was busily rutting to the nubile omega's demanding cries and the bed that disappeared beneath them. Leaving them to fall to the floor.

Sherlock cruelly yanked out of his mate's body.

That was why he was on his back, because there was no bed except their robes. He wanted the omega to be as comfortable as possible during his heat.

His back arched as his omega squeezed around him, as his omega laughed. Pushed down just before Sherlock's knot expanded. Sherlock was caught exactly where he wanted to be. Releasing inside his mate.

When he slipped out of his omega, he arranged his mate to lie on Sherlock's chest. For his comfort and Sherlock's. The idea of his mate going more than a few feet from him was painful. Frightening. He didn't worry his mate would seek another, they had been mated for many years, but the thought of being apart made him ache in his bones.

Finally, his omega was satisfied. Instead of rubbing himself against Sherlock, and yowling his need to breed again, his mate nuzzled his cheek against Sherlock's chest and fell into a weary sleep.

Sherlock fell into his own well deserved sleep.

When he woke, John's scent had shifted. Not returning to its new normal. But something more liveable. Something that allowed Sherlock to think.

John sat up. Sliding off of Sherlock's body. There was dried come in his hair, which stood up at all angles. His neck was ringed with healed bite marks.

"Oh, thank God!" He rubbed the side of his head. "I can think again. The last week has been murder." He looked down, as if expecting Sherlock's come had magically transformed him into an adult. "I'm still young."

This was generally when Sherlock insulted John's ability to think, but since he'd just spent by his estimation seventy-two hours coupling with John with little in the way of thinking through both a red alert and a power outage, he was not in a good position to speak.

John reached into the rucksack, one of the few items still remaining in the room, and rummaged around. He pulled out an empty bottle of water. Filled it from the toilet Khel had insisted should be part of the holodeck suite, and drank near to the last swallow, before refilling it and tossing it to Sherlock. John said, "Why hasn't anyone come to find us?"

But Sherlock was more interested in the earlier remark. "What do you mean the last week?" Sherlock looked John over. He did look calmer. Sharper. Closer to his normal self.

John shook his head. "I haven't been able to think about anything other than getting your cock into me since the accident."

Sherlock considered the implications of what had just happened and what John had just said. "Only a true heat would have triggered a full rut in me like that. I've found it nearly impossible to focus on anything other than you for the same period of time." Which meant there was only one reasonable answer. "You've been in some form of heat since the accident."

"But I didn't go into my first heat until I was seventeen," said John. "Before then, there was a few years of pseudoheat like every omega teen."

Sherlock clasped his hands together thinking. "If that's the case, you weren't merely reverted to an earlier age, but the transporter changed your genetics so instead of going into a pseudoheat, you experienced juvenile heat."

"A what, the what?" said John, looking at him oddly.

"A juvenile heat," said Sherlock sharply. "I realize that it must be an extremely rare genetic variation in Augments. Only three of the original British Augments," best to shy away from how he knew that number, "were created with the genes for that trait." Sherlock stood up pacing around the room. "In most Omegas, the rybo-viroxic-nucleaic sequences in their DNA that guide their maturation cause them to produce lower levels of the hormones that occur in heat, which cause their reproductive systems to develop. Nothing that could trigger a rut in an alpha. But for omegas with the genetic coding for juvenile heat, their reproductive systems fully develop, and the emit the pheremones for heat, but instead of a mature annual cycle, they go into a constant heat cycle between pregnancies until the mechanisms that regulate their heats matures." Sherlock in particular did not want to mention the most famous example of an Augment with this particular condition and their resulting deep seated and never ending rage at the scientists who had created them. Taken advantage of them.

For one thing, the thought of Mummy and sex, and particularly Mummy and the sex that had created the first Mycroft was deeply disturbing. The thought that what had just occurred, Mummy had gone through the same. With another alpha with an equal lack of control. A Beta Human taking advantage of Mummy's genetics. He didn't want to think about it.

Something was about the scenario he'd just described didn't fit the facts. "But this makes no sense. Lucy was in the same accident. Reverted just as you were. She was most certainly, fortunately, not interested in copulating with me, nor I with her. Why did the transporter only affect your RVN?"

He turned to look at John, who was sitting on the floor looking utterly stunned. John scrubbed at his hair. His most common gesture when something was troubling him. "Because it didn't change my RVN." He looked up at Sherlock. "I didn't question that I was in pseudoheat, because this felt exactly like it did when I actually a teenager. Sherlock, I acted out so much in my teens, my parents had to send me to a Catholic school for omegas."

"Yes, as you have told me repeatedly this last week, you shared coitus with Tadpole and others." Sherlock grimaced thinking of the number of times John had brought it up.

"Sherlock, I was trying to make you jealous so you would fuck me. Tadpole and I did it once, and thinking about Tadpole, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe that Tadpole didn't have very many Tadpoles, because I certainly wasn't on any birth control back then, and I certainly didn't… um…" he flushed, "it wasn't as um," he waved at Sherlock, "intense. But… what if I have this juvenile heat gene and I never knew, because I never knew it existed. I've never even heard of it and I'm a doctor." He stopped where he was picking up his clothes. "Fuck… I just realized… Harry started taking black market drugs to transition to an alpha at about the same time I went into what I thought was psuedoheat. The drugs must have stopped the same thing from happening to her. Genetically, we're identical. I went fuck crazy and she started acting…" he waved a hand, "you know. But… we have no way of knowing how those drugs interacted with this genetic condition. How it influenced her behavior. The implications are…" he shook his head. Thoughts flashing through his expression.

Sherlock's ached to think that John, before Sherlock had even known him, had been hurt by a lack of information. When it would seem that one of the few people in the Federation, who knew about the condition existed, was now married to John. Loved John.

He'd long since deduced that the Analyst in John's family folklore had been the first Mycroft. A remote connection thirteen generations and three hundred years removed from Sherlock. When Sherlock had been a child, he'd met Grendel, Billy and Anthea's Augment progenitor, who was also one of the other three Augments to carry the gene for juvenile heat. An alpha carrier could still pass it on. He cursed himself for not doing more than a cursory genetic analysis to determine the distance between his and John's genetics. For not delving more into what Augments in the Federation knew about their own genetics. He'd been more interested in exo-biology than his own.

John pulled on his clothes. "I knew there wasn't enough medical research into Augment biology, but I didn't even think to just do it myself. We have the largest number of Augments in the fleet right here on the Bakerstreet. We've got Billy, who is only two generations off from the original augmentations."

Sherlock opened his mouth to finally admit that John had a considerably closer example of the original Augment genetics to hand when another thought completely derailed his confession. Sherlock wasn't normally this stupid. He'd been immensely stupid. Which led to him asking a supremely stupid question. "John, were you on any sort of birth control just now?"

The annoyed John gave him would have been enough answer. But he said, "Sherlock, besides the part where that's about as effective as a wet paper bag when we fuck while I'm in heat, what part of all I could think of was getting your cock into me wasn't I clear about." John dropped the various toys scattered around the room into his rucksack. "I need to go to sickbay."

"Yes, an afterheat pill. That's reasonable." That made sense. John's current body was far too young to bear a child. Especially not since the norm for Augments was two or three children. That was the only reason that Sherlock ruthlessly tamped down the suggestion drifting through every room in his Mind Palace that they were married, and John's career need not be affected and they even had childcare on the Bakerstreet. Others had their children onboard. Now that he could think, he could think about how a child of theirs might look at John's current age. But only a barbarian would force the love of their life to bear a child in such a primitive way and when all was said and done, Sherlock's genetics were nothing that should be passed on. Except John's genetics were something to be studied. They could ensure that they didn't pass on the particular gene they'd just been discussing if they were to create children in a more reasonable way. In a lab. As science intended. If they were to want to do so.

It was nothing but instinct that had him wanting to produce young with John's eyes and smile and everything.

Nothing but a biologically induced longing somewhere deep in his toes that swelled into his scalp.

Sherlock reluctantly stood up and put on his clothes and the robe, as the replicators appeared to be down as well. "We'll go to sickbay and then to the bridge."

"No," said John, flushing a brilliant red. "You should go directly to the bridge. I'll be fine. I am a doctor. I know how to dispense a pill." His heart was beating rapidly. But as with everything since John had reappeared as a teenager, that could mean anything. His tells wildly varying based on every new emotional spike.

What John said next felt almost like a blow. "If my RVN are causing this juvenile heat thing, John looked at the floor. "We… uh… may need to avoid each other after I deal with um…" he waved at his abdomen. "Otherwise, I'll just go back into foggy brained heat." He scowled. "I've said over the years that the scientists who designed us were utter cocks, but I'm thinking we should go back in time so I can punch them in the nads."

"No," said Sherlock, suddenly realizing what he'd been missing.

"I wasn't actually serious about the time travel. Or you disagree that they were utter cocks? Because I think you just told me they designed sentient beings with a gene that put them in permanent heat through their adolescence, which is fucking messed up."

Sherlock didn't really want to think about Mummy's comments on the subject, and really that hadn't been the point. "I'm an idiot. The RVN. There are multiple species that would never mature into adults without it. Including Humans, Betazed and…" he grinned, "the Draebidium Calimus that Lucy collected on Marlonia. If the energy anomaly that the 221C encountered was a molecular reversion field, that could have resulted in both the demolecularization of the tritanium and interfered with the transporter, causing it to first remove your RVN, which the transporter then attempted to compensate by adding it back in at the maximum point of activity in your bodies. Resulting in your rematerialization as teenagers."

"And that means?" prompted John.

Sherlock grinned. "Now that I know what happened, I can fix this. We even have plants to test with."

John, his conductor of light, kissed him. If Sherlock were not utterly spent, far preferred the adult version of his wonderful husband, who would soon be himself again, and was genuinely curious about what was going on, he might have stayed there kissing him.

But John would definitely need to take the after heat pill. If Sherlock's theory was correct, he could use the information in the transporters pattern buffer to return them to the state they'd been in the last time they transported, but that wouldn't work if there were cellular material splitting inside John. The results of attempting to reverse the accident while John was in a gestating condition would be catastrophic.

He cleared his throat. "I'll test my theory once we know what's going on with the ship."

"Yeah," said John. He squeezed Sherlock's hand, before letting go. "Love you."

Sherlock didn't look at him so he could imagine John was already himself. "Fortunate, as I love you." They opened the panel that would allow them to manually open the door and headed in separate directions.

Really, it was only the fact that Sherlock was distracted by thoughts of John, of all that they'd discussed, of what John was going to go do, that he perhaps when John was himself again they might discuss the possibility of perhaps intentionally reproducing, that as he emerged from the Jeffries tube onto the bridge, a Ferengi fired a blast that had Sherlock falling to the floor, unconscious.


	19. Billy's POV

Billy didn't let his hand dart up to the communications device. He didn't betray that it was there. He worried as they were transported, but the Klingons didn't pay any attention to it when they were beamed over to the Klingon bird of prey. Didn't look at it when they were shoved into a holding cell.

He hadn't yet sent a message. Yet. Waiting to see if Captain Holmes would appear and save them. If they could return to their safe cozy home, surrounded by people Billy trusted.

Connor whispered, "I don't trust her."

Billy whispered back, "She can help us." Connor's expression didn't change. "She helped with the Horta."

Connor squeezed Billy's hand. "Mummy, she's not honest with us." His expression earnest and determined.

But Billy was Connor's parent. Not the other way around. The communicator was their only hope now that Captain Holmes had failed to keep them safe.

"What's going to happen?" asked Sun Liu from where she was sitting on a bench across the room.

"We're going to be sold," said Khatri tiredly. "Just like in one of those tiresome urban legends about Augment trafficking my students used to tell each other. Like my mother used to tell me. As I told my own daughter." Her expression darkened. Other than her daughter had died, Billy had never heard what had happened. Billy could respect silences like that. He had enough of his own. Khatri looked at the Klingons with weary eyes.

Billy was in the twenty-fourth century. His son was in the twenty-fourth century. They'd been living in what was supposed to be their safe place.

Back in the twenty-first century, Colonel Green controlled a Europe full of Augment death camps, but to run to the Americas was to be caught and sold. His own Mum had told him and Anthea that they had several half uncles and aunts who had made the journey, but just as many had died.

All long since dead. Their descendants perhaps in the omegas with him now. He'd never checked so he could tell himself they were. He knew John was. Never checked with John if Connor had the same genetic trait that Billy had inherited from his mum, who'd gotten it from her alpha father, that had had Billy going into heat too young. Connor, the wonderful result, but born in so much danger. Now he berated himself for not making sure that like Anthea, Connor was free of it.  

He had thought he'd made it. That Connor would grow up safe. Protected by people who wouldn't take advantage of him.

He berated himself for not taking Chin up on her offer. She had promised she knew of a place where they would be safe. Safer than a ship in space. He had always resisted, knowing that on the Bakerstreet, Connor had a home. Friends. Neither of their safety dependent on the whim of a protector. Like grandmother's had been. Protection easily given in passion. Easily taken away when the first Augments fled Earth. When Grandfather abandoned his many children to the non-existent mercy of Normal Humans.

One of the Klingons beyond the force field growled. "I do not know why the Ferengi have kept some of you. Too old to sell. Useless."

Khatri said more calmly than Billy felt, "If I may, I was brought here with a bag. Some yarn. Some knitting needles. I can show you what use I can be." The Klingons examined Khatri's knitting bag.

Dropped the force field and tossed it to Khatri. Grinned at each other. She pulled out some yarn and the needles, and knitted a few rows. "See." She came closer to the nearer Klingon. Billy could see her muscles bunching to make a lunge.

"Auntie Khatri," said Connor. "Could you show me how to knit." He held his hands out for the knitting needles. An old woman past her best speed and strength. A child who had yet to gain his.

Billy pulled Connor back. "Don't bother Aunti Khatri now. You know how knitting calms her nerves." The communicator was the better bet. Send a message to Chin and keep Connor from doing something foolish until she arrived. That's all he had to do.

The Klingons fell to discussing one of the Klingon's on-again, off-again romance with someone named B'Etor of the house of Duras.

Billy turned around while they were distracted. Pressed the communicator and whispered to it, "Chin, Bakerstreet has been taken. Connor and I are…"

That was as far as he got, before a Klingon yanked the chain from his neck. Breaking the chain. Bruising his neck. "Foolish Human. There is no one in range." He looked at the communicator. "Puny toy." He shoved it one handed into a pocket on his leather armor.

Billy braced himself to take the blow as the Klingon raised his hand, but Connor darted between them. "Please. There is no honor in beating a captive. My mother is in love. That's all. He wanted to contact his lover to let her know that he hadn't abandoned her. Love makes us all foolish."

The Klingon towered over both of them. His lips curled. It was the same Klingon, who had been talking about his love, B'Etor.

Billy pulled Connor close to him. "My son is right. I… I just wanted my lover to know that I hadn't abandoned her. That when I don't show up for our next meeting, it isn't because I have dishonored our vows to each other. Please, I know it can't reach her, but if I could record a message. Maybe it could make its way to her."

The Klingon looked at him, while the other Klingons laughed. He pulled the communicator back out of his pocket and tossed it to Billy, who licked his lips and opened a line of communication. "Chin, I love you. This communication device may no longer hang over my heart, but know that heart beats for you. This message is my hope that you will hold me close in your heart as well and you will find a way to find me again."

He held the device by the chain and dropped it into the Klingon's hand. There was a tracking device in it. As long as the Klingon was their guard, Chin could find them.

The Klingon turned the device in his massive hands. "What is your lover's planet?"

"Oh, uh," Billy looked at the others, who pretended not to be listening. "Give it to a Breen embassy. They'll make sure it gets to Chin Singh."

"You love a Breen," said one of the Klingon grinning. "They are great warriors. Just ask Vurak the Unlucky. Perhaps we will be fortunate enough to test our honor fighting them.""

The Klingon who was in love shoved the communicator back in the pocket of his leather vest and returned to his discussion of B'Etor's many virtues and maddening faults.

Billy met Connor's eyes, and lifted his chin. He knew Connor didn't approve of his relationship with Chin, but this was a decision for grownups.

It was past time to take Chin up on her offer to take them away.


	20. John's POV

John walked quickly down the hallway. He groused to himself, "My body is like a baby rattlesnake. It doesn't know not to drop an entire load of poison on a single bite." Also, "Utter, utter, utter cocks! Good idea if we went back in time and punched them all in the fucking nads!"

After all those scientists weren't the ones who'd have to gestate the High Order Magnitude pregnancies. Who had been taking a, "What if we do this?" approach to Human DNA. Not that he was averse to gene therapies. He was a doctor, but the level of hubris those scientists had displayed was mind boggling. Course, as he'd heard it, Khan Brittanus' first act on rising to power had been a series of reprisals against anyone even vaguely involved in his own creation.

John rubbed the side of his face. A baby rattlesnake. In the past, when he'd ovulated, it had been one at a time. Hell, since he'd started nuking his ovaries every day, when the universe decided to fuck with his suppressants, he'd managed to keep the accidents down to a reasonable two or three. This time, it had felt like an explosion every single fucking time, and he and Sherlock had fucked non-stop for three fucking days. He had a feeling that he and Sherlock had gone for a new high order magnitude number of fertilized cytoblasts currently floating their merry fucking way down his fallopian tubes to his uterus.

Baby fucking rattlesnake.

He stomped down the hallway thinking pretty much about baby rattlesnakes nonstop.

A Ferengi came out of one of the quarters with a disruptor set to wide beam. "More chi-dren," said the Ferengi through the typical snaggled teeth. He sniffed the air. "Juvenile omega. Useless for a good price for several years."

John was too far to get the jump on the Ferengi. John rapidly switched gears. "I've been hiding. Please, I don't feel well. I need to get to sickbay."

"You must think me stupid, hu-man," said the Ferengi. He waved the phaser, which fortunately appeared to be on stun. "You want a weapon that you think you can use on me. But I am too smart for you."

John did want a weapon. Or a hypospray. Or a scalpel. It would seem, he'd have to stick to a set of novelty dildos. "Other children?"

"We are storing many of you disgusting creatures. My cousin thinks you can be of use, but I say you are a waste of resources."

Other children meant Lucy and Hudson. Course, just at the moment, he was most likely very, very, very, very, oh, so very pregnant. Little clumps of cells looking to cling to the cell walls of his uterus like cancer in a few days to a week.

If managed to get to sickbay and removed them, then based on what Sherlock had said, his body would start over, sending him right back into heat. Of course, in about two weeks, his body would receive the hormonal signal to expand the size of his uterus from its current Meyer lemon size to grapefruit going on watermelon in preparation for his little parasites. Given his current body mass, John would definitely be showing, but he would deal with that if and when he got there.

First things first, regroup with the other adults and then make a plan.

Ferengi sniffed again and gestrured with the disrupter. They came to an open panel that led into a Jeffries tube. The Ferengi grabbed John by the wrist. Even as short as the man was, he outmassed John by forty-five to fifty liters at least. He said, "Do not think to attempt to escape. My cousin is waiting above us." John sighed and climbed up the ladder inside the tube. At the top, there was another Ferengi, equally snaggle toothed. Between them, they took John to the children's classroom. There was a force shield in front of the door. A Ferengi was on guard there, watching a profit-novella. "Another child!" He sniffed, "Another omega. This ship is full of treasures. Someone will want to buy it. Truly Rule 75 is correct. Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum."

"And 218. Sometimes what you get free costs entirely too much." The first Ferengi turned the force field off and shoved John in the room. "You can help watch the younger ones."

John saw Hudson standing nonchalantly by the panel at the back of the room. She whispered, "I don't suppose you have anything useful under that robe."

He rolled his eyes and showed them the contents of the rucksack.

Lucy peered inside. "I am not touching those until they are washed. Maybe not even then."

John didn't protest that he had actually rinsed them already. Instead he asked the billion credit question, "What happened?"


	21. Sherlock's POV

"There was a distress signal shortly after you and Doctor Watson went into the holodeck," said Donovan. "It was our responsibility to answer it. Hudson was completely out of fucking control when we entered the system. I was forced to relieve her of duty."

There was quite probably a very different story from Hudson's perspective that Sherlock had no access to.

Irrelevant. He'd woken up in the opening of a mine. There was a force shield keeping them inside.

"We were ambushed by two Klingon birds of prey under the command of some Ferengi." She rubbed her neck. "Hudson refused to leave the bridge, which caused confusion in the bridge crew. They didn't know who to follow. Klingons took the Bakerstreet with barely a shot fired." She added grudgingly. "Hudson did think to put the ship into lockdown before they boarded us. Fortunately, with…" she looked at the Ferengi approaching with their capacious ear shot, "no captain and first officer, they've had no one to shake down to unlock the ship. They beamed us down to the planet so we could mine vendarite with the Starfleet scientists we came to rescue."

"It is true," said a Ferengi wearing a full body hazmat suit. "I am Daimon Lurin. All the crew of my new ship have entered into an implicit contract of indentured servitude in exchange for not being put out an airlock. Most fair. But, your clothing is unfamiliar to me. What is your rank?"

Sherlock looked down. He was still in Slytherin professorial robes. He pulled on an expression he'd seen his mother-in-law use many times. "What, you don't recognize John Watson of the Watson theater troop! My performance of the House of Gint had Ferengi paying top latinum for seats on Ferenginar." Oddly enough, he had seen several presentations of the House Gint once he got the communications arrays set up to take outside signals in his early teens.

"Never heard of you." Lurin shrugged. "The omega boy we found in sickbay, does he belong to you?"

Sherlock glared at the force field separating him from Lurin. Since he couldn't very claim John as his spouse, given John's current appearance, he said, "He's my son. John Watson II. Keep your filthy Ferengi hands off him."

Lurin looked Sherlock up and down. "You do not look much alike."

Sherlock said fairly truthfully, "John takes after his Mother."

"Ah," said Lurin. He winked at Sherlock through his facemask. "Then you will work hard in the mines or there will be consequences for your son."

Sherlock examined the area of the mine where he was standing. The Ferengi had given the crew pickaxes and hammers, but little else. Clearly they didn't want to give scientists anything that could be turned into an energy weapon.

Lurin barked a command, and an opening appeared at the top of the force shield. A fresh gust of air blew into the mine shaft. The opening quickly closed. Lurin said, "I have given you another six hours of air. If you want another six hours, I suggest you work for it." He smiled pleasantly.

"The Klingons have cut us off three times already," said Donovan, rubbing her chest.

_Unconscious response to memory stimulus._

Sherlock picked up a pickaxe, considering possible avenues of escape.

He would have to think quickly. John wouldn't be safe when he went back into heat after he took the afterheat pill. As Sherlock brought down his pickaxe on a vein of vendarite, he set to thinking.

At least after over a week of near constant desire to rut, he could think again.

The difficulty was he could think of so many ways that John, his ship, his crew, were in danger, and no clear path to escape.


	22. Bihr Sh'Alaack's POV

Bihr's children were on a ship currently orbiting the planet.

An unstable planet.

Full of highly explosive minerals.

That they were mining.

With pickaxes.

"What if Thil tries to," Khel scrubbed at her eyes, "I don't know. Challenge them to a duel. I don't know. He'll get Shor to… why do you let them listen to all those stories that murderer sends them."

Bihr didn't answer. She didn't really have an answer. Saying that she thought that if they were possibly more useful than the books on how to count that Shroleb's parents kept sending. The same book. Over and over. Ishros book was lovely, but it didn't tell their children anything they didn't already know. The universe was dangerous. They needed every tool they could get to survive. At least, unlike Bihr if they had to take shelter in a wilderness, they had learned how to forage for food.

From across the cavern came the rhythmic sound of Captain Holmes' pickaxe piercing the stone. Breaking it apart. She'd known he was strong. Tireless, but until they'd come here, she'd had no true sense of what that meant.

If it meant he'd get them back to their children, she could more than accept his relentless drive. She felt like she needed, even weary from her long day in the mine, to go to where he worked and see if there was more that she could do.

She watched him chisel at the rock. A brilliant Human reduced to something a machine could do far more easily. If it wouldn't have provided them with weapons. She wanted to ask him what his plan was, but the drone monitoring them from across the cavern had yet to succumb to electrical failure from vendarite dust. She could wait. After long moments, she was surprised to hear him say, "You're worried about your children."

She looked down at herself wondering what clue had betrayed her, but he stopped and looked at her. "It's not the dust on your hands neck or the way you are worrying your left antennae. Actually it is those, but also we have known each other for some time and," He swung the pickaxe again. Another stroke. More stone flaked away. "It's not a great leap to know that all of the parents here are worried about their children." He gouged another few centimeters into the the rock. "Is it… you have children."

That was not an acute observation, since they had just been discussing them and he had been present during her children's naming ceremonies and many of their life events.

He continued, "I have not observed them acutely. Are they more like you or your other bondmates? Are the twins identical in every way?"

Bihr laughed. "They're all completely different. A little like each of us. None of us." She gestured at the air. The stone wall. At shadows. "Is John Watson like Harry Watson. Like…" she couldn't say the name, "either of their parents. How about you and your sibling?" She was vaguely aware that Holmes had a brother he cursed about every now and then. "Are you like your parents?"

"I'd rather not discuss my siblings. My brother is an interfering boring prick and my sister put me in a coma when I was six to the point I don't remember anything before then. My parents are…" he glanced at the drone, "very dangerous dictators." It was perhaps the most he'd ever said about his background. Also she couldn't believe that she'd forgotten Euros. Having engineering turn into a jungle was a vivid memory, but in all fairness it had been one event in a career full of adventures.

He swung the pickaxe. "I was just curious about what traits children get from their parents. If you observe behavior that you admire in your bondmates in them?"

"Were you and Doctor Watson…" It seemed an importunate thing to ask, but there was a curious intimacy standing in a shallow alcove that the captain was making by swinging a pickaxe repeatedly at a stone wall, "considering having children?"

The captain struck a particularly hard blow into the stone and the pickaxe snapped. He looked at the broken pieces. "It would be a bad idea."

She went to get two new pickaxes, tired as she was from working all day. A few people were trying to sleep, but they didn't need to earn their air just at the moment. She didn't know where the captain was digging, but she could help. She slammed it less effectively than the captain into the stone. "Just because it's a bad idea, that doesn’t mean you're not thinking about it. We all think about bad ideas."

"True." They worked the stone until Bihr grew almost too weary to stand.

She left the captain burrowing through rock and dreamed, if only for a little while, that she was home on the Bakerstreet. Listening to the sounds of the ship and that all was well.


	23. John's POV

Since the schoolroom had a bathroom with a working sink, John rinsed out his clothes, which were frankly disgusting. He felt a bit of a berk wandering around in just his robe, but it was better than nothing.

Lucy cornered him while he was washing his hair in the sink. "I warned you this would happen."

John was standing in a brightly colored bathroom wearing nothing but a Hogwarts' robe and with his hair full of hand soap. "Yeah, well, turns out that biology had me buggered there." He explained what he'd learned from Sherlock and his own theories about his and Harry's adolescence. As he toweled his hair dry, he said, "Huh, occurs to me that this is a funny way around the ethical issues for a medical study on children."

"So you do think that we're children," said Lucy, crossing her arms. "Earlier, you kept insisting you were still an adult."

Before shagging Sherlock for three days, John would have had some form of heat related meltdown at that statement. He was still kind of annoyed at the agro he was getting from Lucy. "No, but our current biology is affecting how we think." He tapped his forehead. "After this is over, I'll have all of Julian's scans. I could talk to the others on the ship. Reach out to anyone who went to my school. If I can do a wide enough genome-wide-association-study and identify what areas of our genetics cause this, maybe we can identify treatments for kids going through this. But just knowing what was going on would have helped me and my parents. It certainly would have helped this time."

Lucy sighed and nodded. "Are you…" she swallowed and said in a low voice, "pregnant?"

John did not laugh at the question. It wasn't funny and Lucy had made different choices than he had. "For now, let's focus on getting us out of here. Yeah."

Lucy nodded and left him to get dressed in his slightly damp clothes while he washed his robe.

The replicators in the play room were down with the rest of the lockdown. So there was no way to replicate a spanner or any other device to get them out. For whatever reason, the Ferengi didn't realize that at least half the toys in the play room had fully functioning computers in them. Also, there were the toys John had arrived with. The dildos and cock sheath were surprisingly useful given they had internal sources of power and receivers for the transmitter in the wand, which according to Hudson was the real prize.

Although, given their recent use, she insisted he do the honors of removing the external silicone sheath with the school's single exacto knife. Not his best surgery, but once done they had two working receivers and a fairly sophisticated transmitter that could be programmed to voice commands. Provided those voice commands were in Latin, which both John and Lucy were familiar enough with given their medical, botanical, and joint enjoyment of the Harry Potter books.

While he was in the midst of surgery, Lucy crouched down next to Eva. John vaguely recalled there had been some drama there, but it must have passed, because Eva clung to Lucy. Eva asked, "Are you going to keep us safe from the bad men?"

"Yes, but," Lucy brushed her hand in Eva's hair. "I've been talking to Ms. Hudson and I need you and the other kids to be big kids and give up some of your toys."

"So we can defeat out enemies and complete our quests," said Thil, his antennae standing up proudly. His twin, Shor, looked at them carefully from Thil's right hand side.

After a long pause, Lucy said, "Yes."

Thil said, without even looking at his siblings. "We will do it. It's our destiny." Little Keraas shrugged, but her sister, Shrilaas, protested. She'd been having crying jags and meltdowns since John got there.

Sestre knelt down next to her. "It is the logical sacrifice. The needs of the many come before the needs of the few or the one," Sestre sounded very serious and like a chip off the Stonn block. The littlest children were holding up pretty well, all told, but John was glad that Lucy and Hudson had been here to help Sestre before he got there.

Eva whispered, "I wish Connor were here."

Shrilaas whispered, "I want my Mamas."

Eva straightened her shoulders. "You can all share my mama. Kay."

Shirlaas agreed after some thought.

Taking apart the toys was delicate work. But the bigger problem was keeping the Ferengi by the door occupied. Nom, the Ferengi, who'd captured John, was suspicious they'd get up to something, and the rest of the Ferengi seemed to see door duty as a good breaktime.

John and the smaller children were stationed by the door distracting the Ferengi guard with questions. "Why are you doing this? Where is my father?" and remembering advice from his mum, he used all his directorial chops and he and the children chewed the scenery with a lot of shouting and yelling. He yelled, "I need my daddy!" stomping his foot to cover the sound of whatever it was Hudson was doing to a poor doll's innards. He'd never had much luck crying on command. That had always been Harry, but Shrilaas was magnificent, if perhaps a little too real in her role. While Thil was kind of inspired.

It didn't bring any of the other adults back to the ship, and much less Sherlock. But really that wasn't the point.

Course, toys were designed not to be dangerous, so they didn't make great progress either. Also, given many of them were made of yarn or cloth, there were quite a few that were useful only as toys. John took a break from throwing loud tantrums to taking a few turns telling adventure stories to the kids by the door.

Eva held up the doll he'd given her for her fourth birthday. "This story is about my doll."

"That's right, Eva," said John.

Cafa, one of the guards, who John got the impression was some sort of cousin to Daimon Lurin, said, "There is no profit in this Lady of the Flowers story. Why tell it?"

"The profit is how I get paid by adults to entertain and occupy their children's time," said John absently, before remembering that it was something that his father used to say when Ferengi asked him the same question. Glory for Klingons. Position for Romulans. Profit for Ferengi.

"Ah," said Cafa nodding. He moved his chair closer to listen as John entertained the kids, and Hudson and Lucy did something to Cecile, a toy that had started out with two legs and now had eight. It also had the remote receiver from one of the dildos with a booster by adding components from receivers from the other two sex toys.

A week went by and his time ran out to just tell stories.

He was making up an exciting adventure in which the Lady of the Flowers punched Colonel Green in the nads, when the first of the little parasites Sherlock had fertilized decided to get with the program of stealing his body's nutrients by secreting protein digesting enzymes to burrow through the endometrium of his uterus with whatever of Sherlock's little dreadnaughts were left. The process wasn't called invasion for nothing.

He couldn't quite suppress an indrawn breathe and the kids clustered together looking worried. He hadn't warned them he was about to overact.

"Do not think I will fall for this trick, human," said Nom, every suspicious, from his position by the door.

"I said I would get sick if I didn't get to sickbay," said John, who decided the floor was a very good place to be right then. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he curled up as tightly as he could in a futile attempt to tell the cramps twisting his guts to fuck off. This would have to happen while he wearing only his robe while his clothes dried.

Course, they had been trying to figure out how to get access to sickbay and some of the items there. John screamed, because there was no reason not to. Not screaming wouldn't get him to sickbay.

"Oh dear, I think he's dying," said Hudson. "He needs his medicine. We need his father to give it to him."  

Cafa called Daimon Lurin. The cousins loudly argued about what to do. Nom thought it was a trick and that they should do nothing. Lurin said, "That is why grandfather left his latinum to me. You don't have the lobes to hear profit in the wind. I will not throw away valuable merchandise."

That seemed to settle the argument. Hudson came over and pressed a cold cloth to his forehead. "A little warning would have been nice before you attempted this ploy." She slipped him the smallest of the children's tricorder. The one with the low level scanner. He hid it in the sock of his right trainer. It was the only place he had. He was wearing a robe, socks and trainers. Because of course his body's timing was fucked like that.

Soon after, Sherlock was brought in wearing tritanium shackles around his wrists. Lurin said, "See how kind I am to allow you to care for your son. Now heal him and someday you may be able to purchase his indenture back."

Sherlock knelt down next to John. Brushed back John's sweat dampened hair from his forehead. His touch felt amazingly good, which made sense given the oils in his skin would be interacting with whatever hormones the parasites had been releasing for the last week. "John, what's wrong?" John just want to lean into his hand, but listening to his hormones was what had gotten him into this situation.

John said through gritted teeth. "Nom stopped me before I could take my pill." Not entirely accurate about what he'd intended to do, but a good summation.

Sherlock's eyes widened. "Ah."

John curled up in an even tighter ball as the pain of parasite number three invading into his uterine wall ripped through him. Really, it was easier to think of them that way. Parasites. Less gibbering. He wanted to have the tools to make this better.

He also wanted to rip the Ferengis' spines out of their bodies.

Sherlock's wide hand hovered over John's bare belly. Finally, touching the tips of his fingers down. Spreading across his skin. Sherlock said, "Should it be hurting you this much?"

John tried to glare at Sherlock, because at the moment, he couldn't help but think that this was Sherlock and his magic fucking cock's fault, because fair was something he didn't feel he needed to be when being invaded. "It wouldn't. If it were just one."

But it was useless to be mad at Sherlock. It wasn't as if John hadn't been the one pushing to be fucked. And Sherlock's touch felt so good. John rested his hand on top of Sherlock's. Rubbing his thumb over Sherlock's hand. Pulling up his knees as parasite number three really dug in with its villi into the pocket of blood ripped into his endometrium.

He wanted to scream. Decided fuck it and screamed that he hated three.

"Listen to him," Hudson said, "You need to get him to sickbay. He's very sick."

John wasn't sure if she thought he was faking or not, but there were hyposprays in sickbay. There were medical tricorders. There were laser scalpels. Between them, they should be able to overpower one Ferengi guard.

"Get them out of here," said Lurin. "They are disturbing the hostages. And they are disturbing me."

Unfortunately, Nom was the one selected to get them down to sickbay, and the paranoid little prick, after giving Sherlock a shock or three from the shackles, had no intention of going down the ladder in the Jeffries tube to go there.  "If I am below you, you will drop on me, but if you are below me, you will attempt to escape through your greater knowledge of this ship. Better to lock you in a convenient room. If the boy lives, greater profits. If he dies, I will kill the father and live to profit another day."

"But," gritted out John, "You can sell me for a profit and um… Daddy is a really hard worker. Isn't letting us die against the rules of acquisition?"

Nom sneered. "Rule 286. When there is no rule, make up a rule, and I say the rule of acquisition is there are no profits if your product kills you."

He waved his disrupter at them and directed them down the hall to a looted lab. Really nothing more than four walls and a sink. Nom turned on a portable force field sealing off the door, "I will check in on you in a few hours, Hu-mans."

They searched the room looking for anything that the Ferengi had missed, but unless they were planning on using the sink, they were out of luck.

John gave into the attraction of the floor. He felt as if something was clawing at his insides. Technically something secreting a hormone that dissolved several layers of cells was. He told himself they were just tiny pockets of venous blood. No more than the head of a pin. Into which the parasites were sticking little villi so they could feed off him. He repeated, little more than the head of a pin. That because the original scientists had been utter cocks, he had nerves to feel what was going on. Parasite five's jab had him gasping. When it was done, he said, "Hudson had a present for you." John handed Sherlock the small tricorder.

Sherlock pulled something out of a pocket, because of course Sherlock had pockets in his robe. "While I have a present for her." He handed John some small purple crystals.

John gritted his teeth as his parasites let him feel the love. "Gee, thanks, Daddy. But I wanted a pony."

Sherlock glared at him like a wounded bird before settling down next to him. "Give them to Hudson. She'll know what to do with them." John stored them away in his sock.

They looked at the bare wall. John tried to remember what this room was for. "Daddy," he said dryly, "Baby needs a big fat prick full of medicine." 

Sherlock froze. "John, I feel I should tell you that while I love you, I'm not entirely attracted to," but John cut him off.

"Yeah, I know. It's… forget it. I mean, I'm not wrong. It's been a few years since we looked at it, but based on my research," and experience, "it was a pretty effective way to deliver magic healing um…" he looked at the open door, "stuff."

Sherlock lifted his arms and John threaded his head between them to lean against him. It didn't entirely fix the essential problem, but it felt good to be close.

John thought to himself, somewhat randomly, that of all the times that he'd gotten well and truly knocked up by his heat, this was the one that Sherlock knew the most about. Was a reality for him in a way that it always had been for John each time.

So, it was a bit of a surprise when Sherlock said, almost hesitantly, "Have you ever considered, in a less painful way, and science of course, and genetic review of any fertilized specimens, and if I can get a uterine replicator, a…"

"What are you on about?" asked John.

"I was just… would you be interested in… seeing you like this, now that I can think, makes me speculate about what our progeny might look like. Be like. Hostages to fate, but interesting."

John pulled away and looked at Sherlock. "You want to talk about this now?"

Sherlock's eyes were wide. A little panicked. "Now is not a good time?"

"No," was John's brief, immediate answer. The invasion continued. Sherlock holding him. There was no way to conceal just how effective an invasion it was. Sherlock was nothing but the very definition of observant.

In between, they exchanged plans for escape using references to previous adventures.

Nom came back eventually. "Not dead, I see. I knew it was a trick." Nom messaged his cousin. "Lurin, your profits are fine. It's going to live."

John gave Nom a two fingered salute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.arthritisresearch.us/human-physiology/implantation-of-the-blastocyst-and-formation-of-the-placenta.html


	24. Martha Hudson's POV

Martha knew that her telepathy would have done her no good with the Ferengi, but still she missed the familiar noise in the background. As if she'd lived in a well populated city for decades and had opted for some reason to retire to a desolate rural landscape.

For example, she told Lucy, "John's ploy to get the Ferengi to bring Sherlock back to the ship was brilliant."

"That wasn't a ploy," said Lucy glumly and wouldn't say any more.

John was dragged back into the room a few hours later looking sweaty and tired. Still she could hope for the best. "Well," said Martha after she set the youngest Andorians to yelling songs in Andorian, really they were effective operatives, "Did they take you to sickbay? Were you able to get anything useful?"

John pulled several small purple crystals out of his socks. "A gift from the planet. I gave my um… Daddy your gift," he said glancing back at the Ferengi outside the door.

"I see why they wanted our crew." Martha did not pick up the crystals. "That's vendarite. It's immensely useful as a conductor."

John looked at the stones more closely. "I can't speak to its conductivity, but in its unrefined form its highly toxic to the fluid in Ferengi ear drums." He looked at the crystals and at the wincing guards. "This looks pretty unrefined."

Lucy put her hand on John's arm and sniffed significantly. "You need to be careful what you expose yourself to. What if," she lowered her voice, "it hurts the baby."

Martha had honestly not expected that. Not that she hadn't sensed various panicked thoughts from John over the years, but nothing out of the ordinary for a sexually active individual in Starfleet. Although, starting her time on this ship with multiple orgies had somewhat shaped her impressions of the Bakerstreet.

John pulled his arm away. "Lucy, it's not one and I don't plan on keeping them and I could eat this rock and it wouldn't do anything more than be a rock in my intestinal tract."

It really was all too much. Martha decided to focus on the positives. "At least we have plenty of time before you start to show. The last thing we need is for John to be moved in with the adult omegas. We have no way of knowing when the cargo holds on the Klingon ships will be filled, but when they are, the Ferengi will leave to sell it and our crewmates. Our best chance is from here where the security is the lightest."

"Agreed," said John looking somewhat shifty. Or perhaps gassy. "Sherlock's been talking to the scientists who were captured by the Ferengi. Based on what they said, it'll be at least a two months before the Ferengi head out to sell their cargo." John sighed and said, "As long as I wear the robe, it should be fine," which really made no sense at all.

Sometimes the things that boy said.


	25. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock pretended to rub his wrists as they removed his shackles. Primarily, he wanted to palm the small device they were using to remove his shackles. He'd need it if he was going to modify the children's tricorder.

The largest Klingon pounded his chest. "Weak Human slave. Try to break free so I can pick my teeth with your bones." The Klingons were bored, which was good. That meant they were sloppy.

Sherlock had a ninety-five percent chance of defeating the Klingon guards, but that wouldn't help the children on the Bakerstreet or the omegas on the bird of prey.

John, who Sherlock had… who was… so very… clearly his reproductive system… the number John had told Sherlock was… that number of young couldn't possibly survive, but he had a new appreciation for Mummy's contempt for the scientists who had created them. Wished all the more that he had been the one whose age had been regressed. That perhaps if they discussed it, perhaps John, if it had been Sherlock, but it hadn't.

That wasn't something he could think about.

Sherlock mildly allowed himself to be shoved back into the mine.

Stonn, Sh'Alaack and her bondmates wanted to know how the children looked. If they were fine. If they looked okay. "Hudson, Lucy, and John are looking after them." They appeared to need more. "They appear to be in good health." He briefly had a vision of some even smaller version of John in the schoolroom at the mercy of the Ferengi, and understood their fear. "They are in better health than we are."

Donovan bothered him wanting to know if he had a plan. He turned away to hide his movements from the monitoring drone inside the cave, although it was unlikely based on what he'd observed that the Klingons were watching. He pulled the small computing device out of his pocket. "With a few modifications we'll be able to use this to determine the shortest route to the surface."

Donovan looked dubious. "You want us to fucking chisel our way out of a mountain without getting caught using a fucking toy."

"Not exactly." He flipped his stolen tool in his hand and opened the computer's case. "The less said, the less revealed."

"Will I get to kick some Ferengi arse?"

"Obviously."

"Good."


	26. John's POV

John was forced to admit that there just weren't enough crystals to do more than give the Ferengi an ear ache, and Hudson had a good use for them. But looking at the chalk and paint, John had idea.

While Hudson had her own plans now that Cecile was ready. "The holo emitters weren't part of the original ship's equipment. So they're not so much locked down with the ship, as they lost power once the ship went on lockdown."

John glanced at Lucy, who was leading the children through a loud singing and clapping game to cover the sound of their discussion. He said, "Julian's an essential system. So his servers are on emergency power. He's probably on in sickbay, but the rest of the emitters have no power."

Hudson was smiling gleefully.  "Rewire a few of the connections and we can have him obtain the materials we'll need from all over the ship. He, after all, can disappear when he need to." Hudson looked down at Cecile and tapped the wand that she'd reprogrammed to control it against her knee. "This toy here may not be strong enough to do all the work, but a journey started is a journey ended."

John stood up and suggested the children play the flag game, the point of which was to wave pieces of cloth around so the Ferengi didn't see Hudson pull the child proofed cover off the opening to the Jeffries tube cover and set Cecile off on her mission.

In the end, Cecile was able to manipulate most of the wiring, but there some things that were simply too heavy for her. Every time she tried to lift them, she toppled over.

That particular Jeffries tube was too small for Hudson, Lucy, or John to go through. The Ferengi, arguing over how they'd use their latinum, may not have heard them discuss what to do now, but the children did.

Eva said, "Mommy, I'm not scared. I can do it. Even if there are spiders in there." She clutched her Lady of the Flowers doll. John was kind of regretting focusing on adventure stories.

Thil stood up very straight and held his twin's hand. "It's what we were born to do."

Lucy knelt down. "It's very dangerous."

Eva said, "I'll just tell the bad men I crawled into the wall to get some alone time and got lost. Actually, I think I can do it." Eva scowled. A tiny fierce expression. The yellow ribbons around her braids completed the picture.

Thil took her hand. "We can do this."

Shor said quietly, "Our parents are on the planet."

Not much John could say about that.


	27. Thil's POV

It was scarier than his adventure stories would have led him to believe. But crawling through the tubes was a lot like the Count of Monte Christo story that Auntie Harry had sent.

The count was wrongly imprisoned.

Thil was wrongly imprisoned. It was not fair. It was not fair that their mamas and papas were trapped on the planet.

"Quiet," whispered Eva.

"I was being quiet," said Thil, who had been crawling very quietly.

"No, you were talking to yourself," said Eva.

"You kinda were," said Shor, which was the ultimate betrayal.

They reached the junction where Ms. Hebron said to go. Thil held the light while Shor read what they were supposed to do, and Eva, who was the best playing at games that required really steady hands, connected the wires.

They poked their heads out at the next juncture. Julian smiled down at them.

Shor asked very quietly, "Can you go all over the ship?"

Julian flickered in and out. "No. Not yet."

Thil nodded and Eva said, "Kay. We'll connect you."

They went back into the tubes.

Exactly like the Count of Monte Christo. Except they didn't have to dig anything. But there were a lot of connections.


	28. John's POV

John did not like using kids. He did not like sending them into danger, but they weren't exactly safe as hostages either. If it had been himself, he'd have gone in the middle of the night, but since they were talking kids, they had to settle for middle of the day.

John took up door duty again. Focused on talking about Ferengi accounting dramas and legends of immense wealth. Nom wasn't very literate in theater, but Cafa loved Accounting Dramas and had seen every episode of "As the Ledger Balances".

As it turned out, Tevak, who was supposed to be stripping rooms of their valuables, also loved "As the Ledger Balances" and John managed to get a pretty good idea of what rooms had been looted, and the general movements of the Ferengi. He kept them occupied arguing over the plot arc involving the Liquidator Fagda's unionizing twin, Adgaf, while the kids made their trips. The green flicker of the holo emitters outside the door was the only signal he needed to start an argument about Fagda's contract dispute over the freeze dried flesh of his rival, Ragna, to cover Hudson muttering some instructions.

Even with Julian, it was slow going. The children still had to go out to retrieve the items he left by various Jeffries tube openings, which Hudson then had to alter in the middle in the night and then have Julian take to key locations or modifications he or the other children had to make.

They had almost everything in place by the end of the fourth week.

That was two weeks longer than John liked. He had a calendar in his head. Six days after fertilization parasites had landed. Another four to six days to finish burrowing their way through the endometrium of his uterine wall.

Now at four weeks, his uterus was covered in parasites the size of poppy seeds. Poppy seeds releasing hormones for his body to not attack them as invaders. To make a place for them as his uterus expanded to the size of a cantaloupe. John already couldn't button his jeans. His mammary tissue was filling out as well. Sherlock's bite marks on his neck had flushed bright red letting anyone who knew what it meant what was going on. All said and done, he was glad to have a robe.

By the time his parasites reached the size of sesame seeds in the fifth week, they'd start competing for resources. Given he was the resource, that wasn't good.

Then there was the other problem.

John hadn't developed morning sickness. He had morning, afternoon, and night sickness. On one hand, it certainly distracted the guards. But not in a way that was helpful.

Nom argued that John was sickly and should be eliminated as an example to the others to remain healthy.

Lurin argued that John was a valuable bargaining chip to control the mine's best worker.

Tevak thought they should keep John around. "He is very knowledge."

The day they got the signal from Sherlock's boosted tricorder, Hudson leaned against the door. "Honorable sirs, if I'm not intruding, the answer is probably that Nom never took John to get his medicine. His father was able to help him a little, but if you want him healthy, you should take John to sickbay."

John wiped his mouth and didn't have to try hard to look pathetic. Vomiting was like that. "Please, I just need my medicine."

Lurin said, "Tevak have our ship's doctor look at the juvenile in their sickbay, and you," Lurin sneered at Nom, "Remember who is the daimon here."


	29. Sherlock's POV

"Captain, it is only logical that you sleep," said Stonn.

Sherlock ignored her.

"Freak," Donovan said, "You're no good to us if you kill yourself digging a hole."

Sherlock ignored her.

He did not ignore Donovan when she hit him over the head with a shovel. If Sherlock hadn't been awake for several weeks, he wouldn't have fallen unconscious.

He lost thirty-six hours.

Hours when he could have been digging them to freedom. Although, it may have been for the best.

He would never have been able to carry out the delicate work of the next part of his plan. Utilize vendarite's capacity to conduct energy. More specifically its capacity to blow up when exposed to a specific electric frequency. No doubt the reason for the tectonic instability of the planet.

"Blowing up the mine that where we are trapped in is illogical," said Stonn, when it became time to share his plan.

Sh'Alaack on the other hand was at least competent enough to see the implications. "But not if we explode a minute amount in the tunnel shaft that the Captain has been digging. We know that we're close to the surface and its well away from the main seam of vendarite and the entrance.

"It could bring the whole fucking mine down around us," said Donovan sourly.

"There is that," said Sh'Alaack. "But it would look like a mine cave in."

It meant sacrificing the children's toy, but it had done its duty.

Sherlock set it to blow and sprinted down the tunnel towards the mine entrance. Even he wasn't fast enough to out race the blast, which lifted him off his feet and carried him down the tunnel.


	30. John's POV

It had only taken him four weeks after Sherlock knocked him up, but John finally made it to sickbay.

The Ferengi doctor grumbled at having to treat a human. He operating the biobed grudgingly. He tapped the monitor. He glared at Tevek. He glared at the monitor. "This is not a juvenile. It should be with the other adult omegas."

"But," Tevek looked at John. "He's young. He's a juvenile."

"Unless I am mistaken, and who can tell with its disgusting biology, it is pregnant." The doctor looked at John. "I do not know how it will fit so many in there as they grow."

John saw a flicker of fingers by the med shelves where the hyposprays were stored. A modification to Julian's program to allow him to only partially display.

John did the first thing he could think of. He lied. Loudly. Grandly and somewhat nauseously. "It's true. Please, you can't tell anyone. It's just, there was this very wealthy merchant when we made port on Maralonia. And he offered me ten bars of gold pressed latinum if I would gestate his children. Ten bars for nine months work. If you can call it working. Sitting around. No danger of dying at all." He waved his hand palm down in front of his chest. "I haven't told my father. I don't want to cut him in on the money. I thought I could conceal my condition."

"That is a good wage," said Tevek. His voice took a very crafty tone. "But did you get any of it upfront?"

"I'm not an idiot," said John, getting into his role with a note of indignation. "I got three bars before we so much as went to the clinic. I hid the latinum." He leaned forward and dropped his voice so they would have to come closer. "I'll tell you where to find it, if you promise not to say anything to anyone. If you cut me in, I might even tell who the merchant is and we can collect all ten bars."

While Tevek and the Doctor argued over their cut, Julian hyposprayed both of them. They fell to the ground with a thud.

John said, "I'm very glad to see you."

"Likewise," said Julian.

John tapped his toy – if working – communicator pinned to his robe. "Two rats down." He had to be vague since this child's toy was not encrypted or secure.

Hudson said, "Birds are in their nest. Head to first position." John gave himself an anti-nausea shot, which was a relief. Grabbed some real medical tricorders – children's toys only went to so far – and as many biomasks as he could fit in a rucksack from the emergency stash. Things they hadn't been able to carry between levels.

He left Julian to haul the Ferengi onto biobeds and give them enough sedation to keep them under. John headed for the nearest Jeffries tube. When he reached the shuttlebay, he commed Hudson, "In first position."

John put on his biomask and counted down.

There were a series of pops, set off by Julian, as every stick of purple chalk, paint, glitter, or other purple thing that Julian and the children could find and deploy along the route, blew up.

John heard the shrieks first. Ferengi ran into the room clutching their ears just ahead of a purple cloud of dust. As they approached their shuttle, John and Julian turned on the portable force fields, creating a triangle around them in the middle of the room.

John hoped that the signal dampener that Hudson had been working on worked, otherwise their recapture of the ship would be short lived.

It really wasn't good that neither Lurin nor Nom were among the clustered Ferengi, but now they were committed.

"Rats in the cage," said John over the communicator and headed to meet the others.


	31. Martha Hudson's POV

As soon as the door guard took off running in front of a purple cloud, Martha set off the real vendarite explosion with a wave of the very convenient wand, a shouted, "Crepitus," and the sacrifice of three dolls and a capacitor.

Since there was a force field on the door, the simple answer was to blow a hole in the wall to the neighboring room.

They came out into another lab. This one fully looted, but with a wide open door. Three doors down from that was Lucy's lab. The computer equipment had been looted, but the bio samples in the cabinet marked "Warning: Danger, exposure without proper lab equipment may result in death or cellular decompression," had been left alone. Lucy didn't seem to be phased by the sign. She hopped on a short stool and pulled down three bottles seemingly at random from the shelves.

Ordinarily, Martha would have known what they were without Lucy telling her. Lucy would have practically shouted the thought. Instead she had to wait for Lucy to hand her a bottle and tell her what was in it. "Oil from the leaves of the Lethe plant."

"Oh, I remember that mission. We all forgot who we were when exposed to the oil on its leaves. Sleepier than the time Moriarty did it. Atomized Lethe oil will do beautifully dear."

Since they'd had no idea what they'd still find in the lab, there had been no way to organize this part in advance. If there had been nothing, they'd have had to go find something else. Most likely checked the geology lab for samples marked "Danger: exposure could result in genetic transformation and death." They were, after all, child-locked out of the armory.

They met John and Julian in Transporter Room Cloud.

Lucy handed John a red bottle. "This is the pollen from the Ceti Sexus Pollinis. I'll assume you remember how it works." She looked down at his middle. "Are you up to this?"

"Doctor Watson is always up to the task," said Martha firmly. It seemed to have been the right thing to say. But after weeks of paying attention, blind to everyone's thoughts, it appeared she'd rediscovered the knack for saying the right thing, because John nodded, looking very fierce.

If very un-professional in that robe he kept insisting on wearing.

She unlocked the command codes and restarted the transporter.

Martha beamed John over to the larger of the two Klingon ships to free their imprisoned crew.

Took a deep breath and handed command of the ship over to Lucy. "You saw how I operated the transporter. Beam me over to the second ship."

"I saw," said Lucy. Martha really didn't want to have to leave Lucy alone with the children, but really, Lucy did not have experience infiltrating enemy bases, and Martha did. It was as simple as that.

Martha would transport and Lucy would hold the ship in case there was another boarding party. Take the ship out of orbit and head for a starbase if there was any hint of being recaptured.

As Martha stood in the transporter pad, spray bottle at the ready, she had to hope that Sherlock had things in hand down on the planet, because there was only so much they could do up here.


	32. Lucy Hebron's POV

Lucy looked at Julian.

He smiled at her in a friendly way. "I'm not sure I understand the rest of the plan."

"That's because there really isn't one. The children are supposed to remain in the Jeffries tubes on the crew deck, but…" she took a deep breath. Eva was fine. She was safe and hidden and nothing was going to hurt her. Sestre was with her and he had a calm head on his shoulders. "But nothing." She wanted to go to the crew deck, but her obligation was to go to the bridge. She theoretically knew how to operate phasers and force fields. She was a botanist. How hard could operating a spaceship be?

At least she could take the lift now.

Julian flickered in and out beside her. "Our prisoners in the shuttlebay and sickbay appear to be fine."

Lucy did not particularly care. She was tired and upset and her daughter was hiding in a Jeffries tube.

"I would check on the children, but there are no holo emitters there." Julian's smile was thoughtful. "Sorry."

Lucy glanced at him sharply. "What is there to be sorry about?"

"My operational design hasn't really been very helpful to you over the years." He said ruefully. Almost as if he were a real person.

Something in her didn't so much soften, as pile other things on top of it. "You were helpful the last couple of weeks." They kept walking. When they reached the bridge, she asked the computer how to close the doors to the shuttlebay and run a continuous message that any move to break out of the force field would result in the shuttlebay being vented into space.

"Really?" said Julian.

"No, but they don't know that," said Lucy. She wanted to turn on the ship's force fields, but she had no way of knowing how things were going for John and Hudson. She sat down gingerly in the command chair to wait, feeling like an imposter.

Julian looked at the monitor where the planet was displayed along with the two Klingon ships. He said, "I hope Violet is okay."

It took Lucy a moment to process that he meant Hunter. She'd seen Julian and Hunter jogging together and at social functions. It was a small ship. Eventually everyone was in everyone's space, and she knew theoretically that they were together, but she hadn't really thought about it much. "I'm sure she is. I'm sure all of them are. After all, they have Sherlock with them."

"That's not entirely encouraging, given some of the things I've seen him do over the years," said Julian. He continued to stand staring at the monitor, which was just too awkward. "Oh, just sit down." He sat on the command couch next to her.

She didn't want to talk about what was going on. She did have a question that she should have asked years ago. "Did you really not know I'd go into micro-heat after giving birth to Eva?"

"I didn't," said Julian. "I've discovered over the years that there have been many gaps in my database regarding Augment specific medicine. I've done my best to fill in the gaps when my programming was changed to allow curiosity, but even then, because of the taboos around the Augments initial creation, and many assumptions that Augments simply can't get sick or feel less pain, there isn't much research into Augment medical conditions. For example, if I had known that juvenile heat was a potential condition, I would have scanned John's pheromone levels in addition to his hormones. I could at least have prescribed a low level suppressant. Instead, I was blind without medical research to inform me."

"Other than Coronel Green's torture experiments," said Lucy bitterly.

"Which my programming would not allow me to look at." He spread his hands. "The guidelines for ethical medical research and behavior are part of my core programming."

"Oh." Lucy hadn't known that. "That makes sense." She supposed she ought to forgive him. Years ago. A mistake based on a lack of information. Small ship. Dating a fellow crew member. Just as much a product of science as she was. "So do you know much about the design that went into making you?"

"I know the lines of code and their comments, but I don't have access to the thinking behind why certain decisions were made. As it stands so many people had a role in making me, changing my code over the years," he shrugged, "it would be impossible to say at this point."

"I wish I knew," said Lucy, because she really did. "It's different for Normals. They're the product of random evolution. But for Augments every bizarre thing is there for a reason. Because some scientist thought, hey, this is a good idea, let's make this change and I'm left to wonder why for so many of them. And there are so many. They made us in small lots. Three to five with specific variations. To see what would happen. They never made it to the mass production of super soldiers."

"Some could be by accident," said Julian. "I'm given to understand that many of the scientists involved didn't truly understand what altering or crossing a gene would actually do. They did start when genetics as a science was in its infancy."

"True. Juvenile heats. Depression. Odor sensitivity." She looked at the image of the planet and the birds of prey. All of them orbiting in space. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't given into pressure and had kept up my vivo biology studies instead of going into botany. I want to know more about… me. My daughter. My mother. Why we present certain Augmentation traits and why we sometimes don't."

"I can only speak to what information I've been programmed with. I was created to mimic an existing person and yet I was given constraints. Even with curiosity enabled, I have limits. I would not wish to become those scientists so full of arrogance. But it also takes arrogance to think you can crack the nature of the universe." Julian looked down at his hands. His smile was wry. "But you do happen to reside on a ship whose captain is the most curious Human I've ever met, who also happens to be an expert in exo-biology, and with whom you have already partnered on significant research. You'll be able to partner with John on the genome-wise-association-study he's planning. Perhaps ask for Captain Holmes' help understanding Augment sexuality."

He paused as she snorted.

"You know what I meant."

"Yeah, and I do. Anyway, John may love him, but Sherlock looks like a whole lot of work. But," she stared at the monitor with its peaceful planet and ships, "you've given me something to think about."

She thought about that as she waited for word if John, Hudson, or the crew on the planet had made their escape.


	33. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock was flung forward, but that only resulted in abraded skin. Nothing his body couldn't rapidly heal.

When he got up, he saw the orange sky of Ligos VII through a fissure straight above. Donovan, Cho, and Washington came around the corner. Donovan said, "The explosion didn't disrupt the force shield by the entrance."

"It doesn't matter," he said. "They can't cut off our air supply anymore." He picked up his pickaxe, well-worn to his hand after several weeks and climbed up the stone wall to the surface. He didn't wait for the others. There was no time. He had spent four weeks in a mine. John was growing ever more vulnerable up on the ship. It was all he could do to remember to use the axe. His first victim was the force field generator. His second were the houseless Klingon guards. At least they were no longer bored.

Finally, Donovan shouted, "We've taken the base, sir. You can stop." He stopped in mid swing. He noted there were several colors of blood on his axe mixed with vendarite dust.

Standing on the other side the communications equipment, Hunter pumped a fist. "I reached the Bakerstreet, Hudson and the others have already retaken it. Hudson has gone over to the smaller Klingon ship with a bottle of Lethe oil." She listened to the com. "What was that again? Oh." She blew out a breath. "Long range sensors have spotted incoming ships. Lucy's not able to ID them. And um, Captain. Doctor Watson has gone over to the larger ship armed with a bottle of Ceti Sexus Pollinis."

_"That's a bad tactical situation," said First Father. "Going into an environment with no idea of the terrain."_

_"You need more information," said Mycroft._

_Sherlock snarled at them, "There's no time for that."_

Sherlock picked up the only Ferengi left on the planet, who cowered in his body shield, and said, "Send the code to call for transport to the larger bird of prey."

The Ferengi whimpered and did it. 


	34. Martha Hudson's POV

As her heart raced in a manner it hadn't in over a decade, Martha thought, "It is possible that Donovan had a small point." She had taken rather more risks since arriving on the ship than was prudent. Some part of her, with a voice very much like her sector supervisor in her twenties, kept saying, "What? Why?" seconds after she'd launched into a flip, or a kick, or a particularly difficult maneuver to take down yet another Klingon.

It was also the most fun in decades.

Her body worked in a way it hadn't in such a long time.

Perhaps she indulged a bit much in the fun of it all.

The pleasure of a body that functioned the way it was supposed to without the aches and pains gained by years of exactly this sort of activity.

This may have resulted in a slight over calculation. A certain cockiness when she finally encountered a Klingon with a disruptor rather than yet another knife, and she bent to collect her prize. "Shite," she said as what she thought had been a groggy Klingon threw her across the room. She heard, saw, and most unpleasantly felt the bones of her right leg break just above the ankle.

She tried to force herself to move. To do more than lay there panting. Pain radiating from where the bones poked at her skin. It was a bad break. Spiral fracture based on experience and confirmed by the readout on her medical tricorder.

"I may own Donovan an apology," she told the groggy Klingon who was crawling towards her. Sweat beading on her forehead, teeth gritted at the pain, she waited for the Klingon to crawl closer, her spray bottle at the ready.

That was when she noticed that it was practically empty. She had been a bit enthusiastically liberal with it in her fun. "Make that definitely." She put down the bottle and pulled out a knife that she'd confiscated earlier, and waited.

What occurred next was… unexpected to say the least.


	35. John's POV

John had to pee.

He was gassy.

He had a spray bottle and no phaser, because the armory was child-locked, which generally he thought was a good thing, but maybe he needed to keep a phaser hidden under his bed. Another in sickbay. Something to think about if he got out of this.

He had a face mask.

John crept down the hallways of the Klingon ship. There were Klingons on this ship, but the medical tricorder worked a trick for ducking out of their way. On the third deck he searched, he finally found Human life signs. Unfortunately, they were in the brig with two Klingon guards.

John took off his mask, fluffed his hair for maximum baby bird effect, and went inside. He brightly told the guards, "I'm looking for my Mummy." He spotted Owen Tregennis. "Mummy!"

Owen, always a ham, ran to the force shield. "Johnny! Oh, sweetheart. I've been so worried about you?"

"Why are you lose, Human?" said the taller guard. "Are the Ferengi so pathetic they cannot even control children?"

John didn't answer him. He faced Owen. "Mummy, I'm sorry. I know you told me to stay away from Captain Holmes, but he smelled so good." John put his hand on the upper curve of his belly. "I couldn't resist him. He lured me away from the others, got me alone and he… he… he put a baby in me. That's where we were during the alert. Making a baby. I'm so sorry, Mummy! You must be so disappointed in me."

"You fornicating slut!" declaimed Owen waving his hands around. "Whore! Wench! A stainful shame on the Tregennis name! How I will face your grandmother with the dishonor of knowing her grandson is nothing but a shameless fornicating hussy." There was a great deal of hand waving from Owen.

John turned, pinching himself hard enough to draw tears. He looked up at the larger of the two Klingons. "Now the Ferengi say I'm going to be sold into inden…inden… and what about my ba-ba-ba-baay-by!" He put a little extra wail on that last bit.

The Klingons looked flummoxed by this whole speech. They moved closer together, which was when John dusted them with the spray bottle and managed by keeping it on tight spray to not get any on himself.

The Klingons smiled at each other happily.

One of them said, "Korg, I have some blood wine in my quarters and a stick of Denosian amber."

"Good!" said Korg. "Let the discussion of broken family honor stay in the family. Nothing to do with us."

The Klingons ambled off presumably to get very high on Denosian amber and very low on blood wine.

John lowered the force field and handed out masks. He could tell the moment that his changed scent reached the others. That they spotted the marks on his neck.

Owen said, "He really did knock you up. Mum was right to homeschool me and keep me away from alphas."

Sun Liu said, "Lucy was right."

"Not exactly, and there's not really time right now," said John. He looked at Billy, but it really wasn't the time to talk with him either.

Owen said with an evil grin, "I know exactly where to put this pollen in the air filtration system to get the whole ship. The Klingons will be more relaxed than they've ever been."

Connor gripped a knitting needle, which must belong to Khatri. "What do you need us to do?" He looked very determined and so horribly young that John wanted to wrap him in cotton and put in him in a closet. He was two to three years younger than the body John was currently occupying.

John looked at Billy. "I need you two to go back to the Bakerstreet. Lucy has no backup over there."

Billy nodded.

The rest of the omegas were scientific crew, but they had all, in theory, taken yearly combat effectiveness training. "I'll need the rest of you to take of the engine room."

John handed out the face masks. "You all should wait to see that the dust had taken effect." He and Owen went straight to a tiny closet two decks down. Owen hooked up the pollen to a small finned panel. Owne flipped a switch. It looked like nothing had happened.

Owen said, "Was there enough?"

John poked his head out of the closet. There was a male Klingon declaring his love in iambic pentameter to a female Klingon. The female said, "I need rocks to throw at you."

"Yeah, it worked."

Neither seemed very interested in Owen and John, as they passed them. John was just glad that Humans weren't affected by vendarite given those were the rocks that the woman found.

There was a chirp on John's child communicator. Khatri's voice came on. "We have engineering."

Owen looked back at the Klingons throwing semi-explosive rocks. "I'll join you there. We may need to seal off a few sections." He took off at a sprint.

Which left John heading for what his tricorder told him was the bridge.

Unfortunately, as he got there, he found Lurin and Nom, who were far from seeming blissed out on pollen. Lurin shouted, "My profits! All gone and nothing but debt for these useless Klingons." He was holding a disintegrator that was pointed at a dusty and bedraggled Sherlock.

Lurin was wearing a full hazmat suit, which explained why he hadn't been affected.

Nom, who apparently was just too suspicious to get blissed on pollen, said, "I told you this would happen. You don't have the lobes for this."

John took off the robe and prepared for his next performance.


	36. Billy's POV

They retraced the route they'd taken when they'd arrived to find the transporter room. It was abandoned when they arrived. No snarling Klingon to threaten their lives. Billy spared a thought for the Klingon who was in love, but only one. The thought that Chin had not come had been a more frequent refrain over the last few weeks.

Billy tapped the small monitor on one of the controls panels and tried to hail the Bakerstreet, but there was no response. They changed the display on the monitor and couldn't find it. It wasn't there. His relief at rescue crashed around him in white noise.

There was nowhere to escape to. Chin hadn't come to save him. The Bakerstreet and its relative safety were gone.

Connor said quietly, "Mummy, we have to go help Ms. Hudson. If Ms. Hebron took the Bakerstreet out of range, someone may be coming to help the Ferengi. We need to help Ms. Hudson take control of the other ship before they get here."

There was no safe places. No one to rescue them.

A lifetime of hiding.

A lifetime of looking for protection.

His son looking at him earnest and so very vulnerable. Fragile. The echoes of the day Colonel Green's men came and took him from Billy, screaming were still ringing in Billy's ears.

Billy took the knitting needle from Connor's hand. "You're right." If they were going to be safe, they'd have to fight for it.

They beamed over to the other ship. It was quiet. Faint sounds of voices in the distance. Billy said, "Connor stay close to me."

They walked down the corridor with its echoes of voices. Billy alert for the scents and sounds of Klingons. They caught Hudson's scent after a few minutes. Followed it into the outer area of the some sort of engineering section.

Ms. Hudson was lying on the floor, one leg very broken. There was a Klingon a few meters away crawling towards her.

Behind Billy, Connor screamed, "Mummy!"

Billy whirled around. He'd been so intent on the Klingon in front of him, he hadn't noticed the one behind them. The Klingon got far enough to say, "Puny Hu," before Billy stabbed him at his throat with the knitting needle. Not effectively. He didn't know where to strike or how. It skittered on the Klingon's leather collar, making him choke. Time slowed in what seemed like a panicked eternity. Billy tossed the needle up, slapped the Klingon opened handed over both ears like Donovan had instructed in that self-defense class years ago. An open handed punch to his nose from the same class that had his ridged nose squelching wetly. The Klingon was starting to fall to the ground when Billy caught the needle. Time was still so slow. The Klingon was so slow. Not even resisting as Billy stabbed again. A lucky jab. Blood sprayed over the side of his face as he turned and stomped on the neck of the other Klingon, which made a loud crack.

His chest heaved at the sudden action. The clarity of adrenaline. His action catching up with his thoughts. Blood warm and sticky on his skin. He thought, "I've been strong and fast all along."

Ms. Hudson said, "Connor, focus on me. There's a good boy." She met Billy's eyes. "If you don't mind my asking, where did you learn to do to that?"

Billy said faintly, blood pounding in his ears. "Self-defense class from Donovan." He wrapped his arms around Connor. Kissed the top of his head. "We'll keep each other safe. Yeah."

"Yes, Mum." Connor briefly burrowed into Billy's side before getting the disruptor, undrawn, from the belt of the first dead Klingon.

"Billy," said Ms. Hudson, "if you don't mind helping me up, I'd like to close the room off to external access."

Billy bent under Ms. Hudson's shoulder, helped her to her feet, and helped her take control of the engine room. Helped his own rescue.

Connor was going to be safe.

Said "Yes," when Hudson said, "I think, leg permitting dear, that I could teach you some moves that might suit someone with your speed and strength. Would you be interested?" It was a very strong yes.


	37. Sherlock's POV

Sherlock scented John before he saw him. Willed him to go away. To stay safe. But he wouldn't be John if he did.

John had rearranged his shirt by unbuttoning it from both ends, and flipping the bottom fabric to form a sort of cropped top, which simultaneously exposed his increased breast tissue and left the rounding curve of his mid-rift bare. His neck wasn't merely marked, it was ringed with bright red teeth marks. His belly was clearly distended in… very clearly… He looked utterly debauched and slightly tawdry. John walked forward, his hips swaying as he moved. "The disintegrator is too fast for that one. Use something slower." He sneered. "I'm going to lose a year's profits because of him."

"You," said Nom. "Be careful of that one. Give me the disruptor."

"No!" Lurin gapped at John. "Aren't you going to beg me to let your father live?"

"He's not my father, he's my Daddy." John sauntered forward, his entire gate different. A bizarre simulacrum of seduction given his apparent age and he was very clearly with chi… that he was very clearly pr… that Sherlock had bred a great many…. Sherlock's mind stuttered. John said, "The captain here picked me up on Deneb IV. He told me he'd get me to Risa. That all I'd have to do to pay for my passage was let him fuck me. Easy choice given that's what I was selling on Deneb IV." John came closer to Lurin.

"Ha, you weren't careful enough with the merchandise," said Nom. "Why am I the only careful one?"

"Yeah, the fucking pervert induced my heat. Fucked me through the whole thing." He spat in Sherlock's general direction. "Hope you're happy Daddy, because you fucked a whole lot of babies into me. I've been trying to figure out how to use information about who you really are to my best advantage and looks like I finally found it."

"Perhaps, I will kill you instead," said Lurin, "while the captain is forced to watch while all he has built is destroyed."

Sherlock did not shout that if Lurin hurt John, he'd remove Lurin's spleen with his fingers. The disruptor was still aimed in his direction on wide beam. He forced a calm expression. "Why should I care? Piece of trash I picked up off the streets. He's no good to me now that I've had what I wanted. Save me paying later. Although…" Sherlock tapped a cheek as if thinking, "there may be some who would pay extra for a pregnant Omega."

This seemed to capture Lurin's attention. "I will need a stake to start over."

"No, kill them now," Nom reached out to take the disruptor, but Lurin moved away from him.

Lurin said, "How pregnant are you? And don't lie to me, Hu-man."

"Very pregnant," said John solemnly. He made an x over his chest, "cross my heart and hope this arsehole dies." 

"Then you may get your wish. He's destroyed my entire operation."

Lurin faced Sherlock and straightened his arm just as John hypoed him at the point in the hazmat suit literally designed for hypo access. As Lurin tumbled to the floor, John said, "Oh, please, tell me I helped destroy it, just a little."

Nom reached for the fallen disruptor, but John put his foot on it.

Sherlock said conversationally, "I'm covered in vendarite dust. Yes, this is Klingon blood mixed in with it. Let's fight."

Nom sat on the floor. "I'll just sit next to my lobeless cousin."

Sherlock very much wanted to kiss John, but settled for wrapping his arm around him and giving him a quick squeeze.

He could have groaned when ten Breen materialized in front of them. He said, "Go away. You are too late to do anything useful."

Nom said, "I know where the indenture papers for the omegas are. I'll trade them to you in exchange for passage out of this horrible system." He made to stand up, but a Breen pointed a disrupter at him. "Or I'll sit here while you kill the Starfleet officer, who could keep you from claiming this system for yourself. He definitely won't let you kidnap the omegas."

Sherlock felt aggrieved that the Breen had to show up at the least useful time. Any time in the last four weeks would have made his brother's interference helpful, but now there was almost nothing left to be done. "I said that you are not needed. Go away."

One of the Breen tapped a control on their ridiculous helmet. "Where are Billy and Connor?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. It would seem that Mycroft had finally alerted Grendel that he had nearer progeny to hand than ones separated from him by ten to fifteen generations. With the armor and voice modulators it could even be Grendel for all Sherlock could tell. "I don't know. If you had any powers of observation you'd see I've been stuck in a mine for the last month. However," because it was important to be clear on the next point, "before I would let either of them leave with you, I would need Billy's assurance it's what he wants."

"They uh…" said John, "Um… and how do you know Billy?"

The Breen who had spoken said, "Billy contacted me," which was new information, but per some ridiculous protocol for anonymity they did not remove their helmet.

Nom groaned. "What were paying the Klingons for if they let the merchandise contact our competition?" He subsided as another Breen turned their disrupter at him.

"Billy and Connor should be on the Bakerstreet," said John. "Contact our ship."

"Your ship left the system as we approached. Perhaps fearing that we were here to assist the Ferengi rather than coming to your assistance."

"Then you will need to wait to talk to Billy," said Sherlock who did not have the patience for this. Not now that John was finally near him again. Now that John's hand was in his. The oils his body were producing as a result of things Sherlock shied away from thinking about adding additional comfort to the comfort John's presence always brought. He said, "Do something useful and imprison these Ferengi for kidnapping, trafficking in sentient beings, and attempted murder based on intergalactic statute. Round up the Klingons who are high on sex pollen while you're at it."

He focused on sending a signal to the Bakerstreet to return, and contacted Starfleet regarding the situation.

He did not let go of John's hand.


	38. Chin Singh's POV

Billy squeezed Chin's hands. Looked into Chin's eyes. His scent a comfort. The rest of her was encased in armor. She'd broken protocol to remove her helmet. She didn't even remember removing it. Only that it needed to be gone so she could let Billy know it was her. So she could see him with her own eyes. Breathe the comfort of his scent, alive and well, if battered by circumstances.

She'd arrived to find the bodies of the two Klingons still lying on the floor. To find Connor saying, "Mummy took care of them," and staring up at her. He'd gotten taller since she'd last seen him.

Chin found herself almost desperately explaining to Billy's enigmatic smile, "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I would have come sooner, but my parents wouldn't give me ships. I… should have stolen a ship. But they would have stopped me."

"And are you ever going to tell Mummy who your parents are? Tell us anything about you?" asked Connor. "Why are you in Breen armor? Where would you get Breen ships? I've been studying them in school and they're a nasty race. They don't help anyone. Why would they help you?"

"Connor," said Billy reprovingly. "It's fine. You go help Ms. Hudson in the next room. Now that Chin is here to help take care of the Klingons Ms. Hudson can have her leg seen to."

"Yes, I can help with that." Chin snapped her fingers and pointed at the next room. Her strike squad, their expressions hidden by their armor, certainly unable due to her position to remonstrate her for her egregious breach in protocol for removing her helmet, followed the reluctant Connor into the next chamber.

Chin took advantage of their absence to steal a kiss or ten. Billy wasn't angry with her. It took no powers of observation to know. He willing to give kiss for kiss. It gave her the courage, even after arriving so late, leaving Billy in so much danger to say, "Come away with me. It's not safe for you here." She felt desperate. Had felt out of control since she'd received Billy's message. But her parents, as always, were unmoved by her desperation. By any of her emotions. Would only give permission for her to take several ships when Mycroft stepped in and pointed out that if Billy were in danger, it meant that Sherlock also was in danger.

Mother authorized three of their fastest ships within a moment's hesitation.

Chin couldn't let herself think about that.

Could only feel the weight of Billy's response, "Give me a little more time."

He always said that. There was still some time left. Not much, but some. Her parent's new ally had accelerated their time table. Gotten them to agree in a way she wouldn't have thought possible. She wanted Billy nowhere near that cold creature, but surely he and Connoer were safer with Chin than where they were. In the path of the oncoming storm.

Chin thought rapidly. "Meet me in three months. Meet me on Beta Augurae." She'd never specified a location. Always let Billy chose the location, but if Chin's arguments failed, perhaps there was someone else who could convince Billy.

Billy rested his forehead against Chin's. "I'll meet you there."

Relief flooded through her. This could work. "Bring Connor, there's someone it's long past time you should both meet." It had to.  


	39. Lucy Hebron's POV

Lucy was not going to be intimidated by Sherlock. She'd known him for years. They'd worked together on countless projects. As she came into Transporter Room Forest, Sherlock said, "Aren't you going to irrationally request the filtration units be turned on full?"

She wanted to shout that it wasn't irrational, but as she now knew that idea had been based on a Normal society preconception about Augments that she'd need to work on inspecting in her own reactions. If she hadn't been convinced of its truth, she'd have figured out that John was acting out of character and been able to help him. She put down the tray of plants. "No."

"Put one of your control plants on the nearest pad. One of the ones whose growth hasn't been accelerated." As if she didn't know what he meant.

She put one down.

He fiddled with some controls. She chewed on her lower lip.

"Say what you have to say. You've sighed five times since you arrived in the room."

"No, it's just. John told me what you told him, and it sounds like there may be a gene that causes some sort of early heat."

"He mentioned that we would begin the research into the specific genetics that cause the trait once this is dealt with." Sherlock glared at the transporter controls. "I should have added better compression algorithms years ago. It is fortunate that you used the other transporter room to go to the ships, or the memory of beaming you onto the Bakerstreet would have been lost."

"We did think of that, you know. We're not idiots," Lucy found herself saying before being able to hold the words in.

But Sherlock, as always, grinned at her response. He liked to have people talk back to him. Lucy knew that. Sometimes, she forgot.

"I want… I want to know more. I want to know what you know about Augment biology." Also words that escaped. She'd intended them, but not that bald a statement.

Sherlock looked up. "I know a great deal." He pursed his lips. "It had never occurred to me that such basic information wasn't available."

She made herself say, even though she didn't want to, "Even if I'm stuck reading about our ancestors being tortured in WWIII, I want to know."

Sherlock looked at her and really she had no idea how John put up with being looked at like that all the time. She felt like she was being flayed, examined, and found wanting. What he said was, "You'll need to expand your course of study. Go back over the biological articles that I gave you when we were researching the effects of the Ceti Sexus Pollinis and then focus on Augments. When John ramps up his genome-wide-association study, you'll be ready to assist him." He grimaced. "John isn't always happy when I try to assist him." Rolled his eyes. "Call him an idiot for being an idiot."

"Um…" she swallowed. "I'm not the only one on the ship who feels this way. Pretty much all the Augments on the ship want to know more."

"Fine, John can go over basic biology with all of you at those Augment meetings that John is always leaving me to go to. Waste of time." He looked away from her and it was like a heavy gravity planet had looked away. A star. She already felt lighter. He said, "There are other sources of information that may be more useful. I have access to some of the original scientists' records, and… other much more extensive research on Augment physiology. Although… it may not be entirely useful given genetic divergence."

A surprise. Or not given who she was talking too.

He put his gravity well gaze back on her. "When you have sufficient background to understand it, we will discuss. Now if you don't mind, I am working on turning you all back into adults."

He transported the plant. She was able to confirm that it was an adult plant. His smile at her was brilliant. "I'll tell the others." He practically bounced from the room.

The joy on his face was she supposed that was why John put up with Sherlock. Then again, they were two peas in a cracked pod.


	40. John's POV

Billy said, "I guess somewhere along the way, Augments forgot some things." He looked at the monitor. "It's funny that we'd forget something like that. I mean, I don't expect many people to remember my grandfather, but Khan Brittanus had the same genetic trait. They went through Juvenile heat." He sighed. "Mum had it. I have it, and now I know for sure that," he looked at the monitor, "Connor has it." He looked at John. "Will you be able to do something?" He looked frantic. "I don't want to him to go through what I did. I could have been killed by Colonel Green's men or a random stranger when I left my hiding place back in London. But I still broke out of our safe house because I needed to… you know."

"I know." John would need to get more details from Billy about his specific experiences. But John would need to write up a survey based on his own experiences first. Write up the details for the genome-wide-association-study he was planning. It could wait.

Billy said, "I would do anything to keep Connor safe. But how do I fight something that's part of us?"

"Let me fight for you." John had been fighting diseases on the edges of space for almost a decade, and yet he finally felt as if he'd found his war. "Since I've been able to identify three people on the ship who can self-report that they went through juvenile heat, and I've been able to identify some common genetics," he touched the area on the monitor where the range of single nucleotide polymorphisms that he, Owen, Billy, and Connor had in common were located, "I can start researching drugs and treatments that either turn off the gene or at least turn on the gene that regulates our heat. It's still early days. We'll talk specific treatments as we get there."

Billy shifted restlessly, "But… you have to be able…"

"We've got time. Connor's eleven and a half, right?" Billy nodded quietly. "I start the research now. I do a larger study with a larger pool of people. Make sure I'm narrowing in on the right bit of our genes. Look at treatments. You have my promise. I'm going to put all I've got into this to make sure Connor doesn't go through this. Yeah?"

"Yeah," said Billy. He looked around. "At least there's that. Still," he fiddled with the chain around his neck, "twenty-fourth century, and we still ended almost sold. Like my aunts and uncles and cousins back in the twenty-first century."

"Yeah, well," John didn't have any answer for that. John's mind finally caught up with something Billy had said earlier. "Wait, Khan Brittanus couldn't have gone through juvenile heat. He was an alpha. You mean he was a carrier."

"No, they really weren't," said Billy very firmly. "People seemed to think that because they were one of the Khans, they had to be an alpha, but according to Mum, more than half of the reason Brittanus was so pissed off when they came to power, was because of what they went through during their juvenile heat, um…" he waved vaguely, "I mean, the British Augments were all still teenagers when they took over England. I saw Mum's pictures of grandfather. He was younger than I am now. Actually, I don't think any of the Khans were all that old."

"That," John looked down, "makes a weird sort of sense." He nodded. "We'll talk later. There's um…" he waved at himself, still wearing a cleaner version of his Hogwarts robes to conceal what he'd rather not have everyone focus on, "something I need to do." Not that the robes had stopped Sherlock from looking at him stricken when he'd come with the news that he had the cure for sudden onset teens. There was a cure, so John needed to clean house.

John disposed of his organic tea. Walked Billy to the door of sickbay. Gave himself a nutrient shot. A muscle relaxant. Held the device over the slight curve of his stomach, distended in preparation for fullness, although his current occupants were only the size of poppy seeds. His uterus was a particularly full bagel just then. He clicked the control and stopped the war for resources that was about to happen. He didn't even feel it. It would take his body awhile to readjust. It wouldn't need to. He'd be an adult again soon. He put the cube away in the box. One cube was much like another. Was glad that Julian had kept the sickbay safe from looting. He'd added a phaser and a lock for the box.

He went down to the Transporter Room Forest. Lucy and Hudson were already there waiting. Hudson on her crutches. Lucy wearing a loose kaftan dress. Clothes that could easily handle a shift in size.

Sherlock shot him a look. He looked down at the transporter controls.

John got up on the pad. Looked around the room at the familiar paintings. It didn't feel any different when the transporter beamed caught him up. But when he rematerialized, he immediately felt it.

It wasn't that he was taller, or calmer, or his mind worked in different ways, or even that he no longer had the appearance of pregnancy, it was that he felt like himself again. That he'd left teenage John behind a long time ago.

"Although," said Hudson, "It was certainly worth a visit," tapping her forehead, smiling. "It is wonderful to come back home." She took a ginger step forward. "And I don't have to heal a nasty break that this body never had. Only the ones I've earned with this one."

Lucy had hardly stepped down from the transporter pad when Eva barreled into the room. "Mommy!" Lucy swept her little girl up in her arms and spun her around. Kissing her cheeks over and over.

"Mommy loves you so much. Let's go back to our quarters. We can have pancakes for dinner to celebrate."

Eva squealed in joy.

Hudson coughed and left the room.

John got down from the pad. Sherlock did not similarly sweep him up. John squeezed Sherlock's hand. "Want to scan me here or in our quarters."

"Here," said Sherlock quite softly. Generally, Sherlock enjoyed scanning John, but this time he didn't seem to enjoy it very much. Sherlock handed the tricorder back to John. "You match the pattern of your last transport, as expected. Do you remember what happened?" They'd discussed the possibility that there might be some memory loss as a result of changes in brain mass and development.

"I remember." John nodded. Nodded again. "Yeah. So, I'll see you in our quarters." He left Sherlock looking at the tricorder.

He walked to their quarters feeling very heavy. Wondering if all of this hadn't broken something, but deciding that borrowing trouble for the future made no sense.

He gave their quarters a thorough cleaning so it smelled a bit less like teenage heat. He set to cooking comfort food. Steak and kidney pie. Toasted cheese. The comforting smell of food filled their quarters, when the door opened. John stared at Sherlock. "What have you done?"

Sherlock padded over to him. Small, fragile, not even as old as a teenager. Very much a child. "I just," his voice was high, "I just needed it. I don't remember being this age." John did a quick scan. Sherlock scowled. "Ugh, I can turn it back. I set the transporter to auto transport me in thirty minutes. I just want the memory of being held by someone who loves me when I was… smaller. I don't have that, and I need it." He held up his arms. John picked him up and sat with him for a long while on the couch. Not saying anything. Rubbing Sherlock's back. The pie was done by the time Sherlock whispered, "Do you think you could want someone, a child that maybe looks a little like me, to hold like this?Be a parent to?" Perfect timing, as the transporter slipped him away.

When Sherlock returned, he was back to normal size and age. John decided that it was best to follow the pattern of their relationship and not say anything about Sherlock's question.

Sherlock appeared have the same plan, because he didn't repeat it.

Mind that was why he had a mouthful of kidney pie, which he promptly almost chocked on, when Sherlock said, "The next time in the holodeck, it's my turn to choose. I'm going to be a twink Sugar Baby, and you're going to be my Sugar Daddy, who keeps me in the style I like." He rubbed his toe along the inseam of John's trousers. "I'll be so good to you, Daddy." He innocently drank some water.

John wondered what it said about them that he didn't have a problem with the idea. He waved his fork at Sherlock. "I'm not turning into a teen again."

"Not interested."

"You have to be at least sixteen. I mean it!" It was best to be firm at the outset. Give an inch and Sherlock would take a parsec.

Sherlock sniffed. "Fine."

John would far rather argue about the age Sherlock might transform himself into than deal with or worse talk about his drawer full of consequences. About whether they wanted to start a family. Were ready to start a family.

Then, because they did share other interests, they discussed John's genetic research so far. How to structure the genome-wide-association study.

Sherlock called him an idiot. John called him a prick. Talked out John's plans for potential treatments. The potential impact of studying Augment genetics. Certainly these results were going to make a galaxy of difference to the next kid caught up in something they didn't understand.

Sometimes that's all that was needed. To know what was going on.


	41. Martha Hudson's POV

The ship hummed around Martha. A constant murmur of thoughts. Not that she was reading minds. That would be invasive. Wrong. A very bad idea for a Betazed who wanted to retain any sense of self.

Fine. She fluttered the love birds, but they were talking science.

Donovan stomped up to her on the bridge. Recalcitrant. Angry. Guilty.

Martha said, "I'm not going to press charges. You thought you had a reason to mutiny. Considering events, it's questionable who was correct."

Donovan stopped. Clenched her hands. "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Of course not," said Martha. "You knew you didn't need to."

She serenely felt Donovan skulk back to her station. There was still plenty to do. The Breen were claiming the planet for mineral rights based on their treaty with the Federation, but the Federation couldn't just let them turn the Ferengi and Klingon prisoners into slave labor. But the Bakerstreet was certainly not equipped to handle them either. There would be a good deal of discussion until the relevant authorities arrived.

Until then, Martha let the murmur of her ship wash over her. Long into the eternal night.


	42. Henry Killander's POV

Henry Killander was a captain. A veteran operative. Consigned to monitor and analyze galactic traffic for patterns at a remote outpost. The ass end of space.

All because of the Bakerstreet. Because Hudson had betrayed everything Section 31 stood to protect.

He knew Khan was alive and a danger to the Federation. If he could prove it.

When he saw Doctor Watson's call for participants in a genome-wide-association-study, he knew immediately he had what he needed. It was all there written out. A request for participants in a study to identify a trait in the general population resulting from a specific set of genes passed on by three of the original British Augments. A three that might include Khan Brittanus. Those participants that matched a specific set of genetic markers, helpfully provided with the study, would be asked to provide phenotypic information about their behavior between the ages of thirteen to sixteen. Well, okay, technically, it's a PheWAS. i.e., he knows a trait, and is trying to map the genes associated with it, but I'll stick with spelling out GWAS in when talking about the study. Yes, the study will keep coming up. This, like Lucy's study was for her, a career defining project for John. 

Anonymized of course.

True anonymity was something that Section 31 didn't believe in.

Watson indicated that the single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs, provided in the study proposal were de-identified from the genetics of four Augments of British decent. There were only three Augments of British decent on the Bakerstreet. Sherlock Holmes,John Watson and Owen Tregennis.

He smiled at the study and said, "Got you!" At the ass end of space where he was currently buried, there were no other officers to hear him speak aloud. No one to hear him shout, "Yes!" when he ran analysis of the genetic information from the cryo chambers.

None of the remains had the SNPs from the study. Particularly, not Khan Brittanus'.

He ran the analysis twice to be sure and prepared his own report to go out.

He might be stuck in this post for now, but that wouldn't be for long. It was his duty to do something about the danger facing the Federation. It was what Section 31 existed to do.

++++  
This is too long for an end note, but it's worth including.

So what's going on in this end of "episode" teaser relates to two trends in genetics today, which it's probably worth talking a bit about (more below):  
-What John is trying to do: He's setting up a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to uncover a previously unknown condition (and possible treatment) for a population typically ignored by medical studies.  
-What Killander is trying to do: prove the bodies destroyed in the cryo chambers are not Khan and "his" followers using genetic information, and by extension save his career.

GWAS:  
Genotype information is information about your genetics. There are about 1.5 millions SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in your genetic code that make you (genetically speaking) you.  
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genomicresearch/snp  
FYI: SNPs are pronounced snip. Just in case you want to slip it into a casual conversation.

Phenotype information is the physical expression of traits and behavior. It can range from things like eye color to twitchy sleeper to Parkinson's disease.  
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-genotype-phenotype.html

When you get a genetic test done (genotypic data) and they ask you questions, what they are collecting is phenotypic data.

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) is when researchers look at aggregated data (not 1 person, lots of people) and drill down on the correlation between # with a certain set of SNPs who confirm they do or don't have a trait (phenotype). 

Once researchers know for example that a significant percentage of people who have Parkinson's share a certain SNPs, that can target drugs to affect the relevant genes. It's worth noting that the Michael J Fox foundation has made some pretty good progress using that technique.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_association_study

So, what John is doing here is putting out a general call for Augments, (remember there was a diaspora out of Europe to get away from Green) to do a GWAS to see if he can definitively identify that the SNPs from the relatively small sample set of John, Billy, Owen, and Connor are really associated with juvenile heat by looking at a wider pool of people. He'll need to compare a whole lot of genetic data and have everyone take a survey (phenotypic data) to indicate if when they hit puberty they experienced the XYZ symptoms that I had John exhibit over the course of the story.

That's why (from a Doylistic perspective) that Lucy was also changed. She was my control so Sherlock and John could so quickly get to the realization that John had an undocumented genetic trait. It just as easily could have been Sh'Alaack, but that wouldn't have gotten me my control character.

By looking at the results of the GWAS, John knows he'll be able to analyze particular drugs that will say, turn off juvenile heat in Connor or allow his body to regulate when he goes into heat. This is the future, so the results of this and other research John will not be focusing on will be given away for free. 

What Sherlock and Chin Singh know about Augment genetics… is for a later story. 

 

ID the people in the cryo chamber: Killander  
Back on the Horta planet, Killander was trying to find someone within two or three generations to the occupants of the cryo chambers to provide a negative ID. He needed someone that closely related because anyone less closely related wouldn't be good enough proof that the people in the chamber were random bodies that had been disintegrated.

Just looking at say, John's DNA (as a British Augment) wouldn't have been enough to know that the bodies were anything other than British Augments. It's like IDing a person as being of Irish descent versus a specific person of Irish descent. John's too distant a relation. 

BTW: The way the Golden State Killer was IDed was because a close enough relative posted their genetic data on an open source website, GEDmatch, that puts all the genetic data out to flap in the internet wind, which allowed police to get a match. A thirteenth degree relative (like John) wouldn't have been close enough. 

Now however, Killander doesn't need to find a close relative. He just needs to verify if the chamber marked Khan (plus two others) contained the genetic markers for very specific SNPs that John has carefully identified in an academic research study. 

It's a bit like the method used to ID Richard III's remains (mitochondrial DNA). Mind you, there are still some people who dispute that ID of Richard III because the Y chromosome DNA for that family tree isn't a match for the remains found under the parking lot. But… mitochondrial DNA, which doesn't change much and you get from your mom, is a bit more reliable than Y chromosome DNA, which also doesn't change much, but you (assuming you have XY chromosomes) get from your dad. It's um... harder to make a mistake about maternal relationships.

Anyway, so that's the potential benefits and threats to privacy through genetic testing in a porny fanfic nutshell, which has little to do with making super soldiers. Now on with the plot, which is thickening.


End file.
